


They Say I'm Doomed (But I Feel Fine)

by bonmoustache



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Angst, Apocalypse, Horror, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-09
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:53:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonmoustache/pseuds/bonmoustache
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Karofsky has set rules for the apocalypse, so when it actually arrives, he's sure he can handle it. His family dead and Lima in ruins, Dave sets out in search of other survivors but finds only CJ, a local college student, and an old skeleton from his closet: Kurt Hummel, back in town for god-knows-what reasons. As they cross the country in search of shelter and other survivors, Dave learns that his rules may not be entirely accurate, and that in order to survive, one must learn to trust; sometimes, even love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When the shit hit the fan, Dave Karofsky was ready for it.

The first rule of any apocalypse horror movie is BE PREPARED. As ridiculous as it sounds, Dave had been prepared for The End of Days for years. He had flashlights stashed in places all around his house, in his car, tiny MagLites that he kept tucked in the inside pockets of all of his jackets. He kept a wooden baseball bat next to his bed, in grabbing distance, and there was a crowbar stuffed discreetly under the driver's seat of his car. He kept a fully stocked first aid kit in his glovebox, and he practiced his sacks and tackles every day so he could take down any monster, zombie or infected dick with ease and minimal pain. To say Dave Karofsky was well-prepared was an understatement. Dave Karofsky was indestructible, a force to be reckoned with when the Apocalypse came nigh.

The second rule of these movies is KNOW THE PROTOCOL. Every horror trope has its ground rules. Dave Karofsky knew that, with zombies, you aim for the head and destroy the brain (because mere decapitation doesn't always work). He knew that, in the event of a natural disaster, it's every man for himself, family and friends be damned. (It also helps to know the President in these events, because he will evacuate you much faster. That item was on his list.) Should a dangerous outbreak of a disease occur, if you are not one of the lucky few that is naturally immune to it (and it's bound to happen) then you carry as much fucking hand sanitizer as you can and you stay in safe zones as much as possible. And for the love of all that is good and holy, if someone you know shows signs of infection, you kill them, even if they're your grandmother, your best friend, the love of your life. No sympathy, no mercy. Monsters, beasts, ghosts and their ilk were best handled using spiritual means, but barbaric ones were just as effective depending on the creature's nature. Should Godzilla, Cloverfield or Mothra invade the city, you don't trust the military and you certainly don't run around blindly like everyone else. You stay the fuck put in a basement (not in your penthouse!) and you wait it out. You fight the aliens, because if they're going to kill you, you might as well go down swingin'. The only trope he didn't have a solution for was the sun exploding or a meteorite. In those cases, you're fucked either way; in those cases, he figured he'd just throw caution to the wind and start looting, because hey, he had always wanted that 60" HD plasma screen down at the Best Buy.

The third rule was DON'T TRUST ANYONE. This wasn't a hard one for him to follow, because naturally Dave didn't really trust anyone that wasn't his blood, but it was nevertheless important. You never know who is and isn't possessed by something, or who might be working against you (à la Dead Space), or who is in cahoots with the scientists. Hell, the person you share meals with might be the cause of the whole mess. In an apocalyptic world, you can trust yourself and only yourself, because when faced with immediate and certain death, people change. The mild-mannered kid in your math class might turn into a monster who wouldn't blink twice while he shanked you if it meant he lived. If Dave ever found himself in one of those movies, he'd be the rogue loner, the one no one likes, but the one who winds up living because he's smart, and he doesn't trust anyone but himself with protecting his life.

The final rule, though, in contradiction to Rule 3, was ALWAYS STICK TOGETHER. Moms don't tell their children, "safety in numbers" for nothing. Along with staving off loneliness, being in a group ups the individual's chances of survival because there are more things to distract monsters with. Dave knew this line of thinking made him an asshole, but he didn't really care. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to tough it out and keep self-preservation at the front of his mind. Survival was his top priority; human relationships, in retrospect, were meaningless.

Dave knew all the rules, but that didn't mean he didn't feel a rush of adrenaline-fueled fear when he woke up one morning and saw the thing at the foot of his bed, all red eyes and wide-mouthed with rows upon rows of sharp, pointed teeth. He didn't even think twice. It pounced on the bed and opened wide and he took that bat and he smashed it in the skull. The creature let out a shriek of pain and lunged at him, claws extended and ready, and it got a good scratch on his face before he took the bat and rammed it upwards. There was a sickening crunch sound as he broke the bones, the teeth and the jaws of the beast. It let out a feeble gurgling sound and rolled off the bed and to the ground, where it lay twitching.

He wasn't done. Dave got out of bed and he held that bat high and brought it down like an executioner's axe. Again and again he brought it down, until the creature stopped moving and any semblance of a head was long gone. Panting and covered in black blood, Dave fell to his knees next to the creature's corpse and caught his breath.

His first thought was a disappointed one: "Of all the apocalypses, it had to be a monster apocalypse." He'd always wanted a zombie apocalypse himself. Zombies were easy. He wasn't scared of zombies. But this? This was some Silent Hill shit right here. Even though he knew how to handle it, he couldn't help feeling slightly cheated that of all his favorite tropes, he had to be stuck with the lamest one. Not to mention, those Silent Hill beasts are fucking scary as shit.

After regaining his composure, his second thought was, "Mom. Dad." A glance at the clock showed it was nine in the morning, but it was as dark as midnight outside. If he hadn't just beaten a monster to death, he would have considered it odd. As it was, he shrugged it off as being par for the course (because it's the Apocalypse) and stood up, clutching the bat close to his body as he opened his bedroom door, ready to swing again if need be.

The hall was quiet and pitch dark. Still holding the bat defensively, he fumbled along the wall for the light switch. When he flicked it, the lights flickered once in a sad attempt to come on before they died again, accompanied by that sad "shutting down" noise that comes during a power outage.

"Apocalypse," he reminded himself. He edged along the wall towards a potted fern his mother had put at the corner of the hall (decoration). Two years ago, he'd stuffed a thick, heavy flashlight into the soil of the plant for precisely this occasion. Also, its weight made it a nifty club. At this point he figured he could use all the weapons he could get his hands on. He reached out, fingertips sensing for the fern. When its leaves tickled the pads of his fingers, he slunk forward and plunged his hand into the soil. He almost depotted the plant, and he definitely got soil all over the nice white carpet of the hallway (Mom was going to be so mad) but he held the flashlight firmly in his hand. He pushed the button on the side and the torch illuminated, a beam of light extending down the hall.

Well, if Mom was going to be even the slightest bit mad at the soil on the carpet, she was going to be filled with homicidal rage when she caught sight of all that blood at the end of the hall.

Then his heart stopped. For the briefest of moments, he forgot his own rules and ran towards his parents' room. The door was open, and even in the darkness he could see the carnage. There were disgusting sounds, like lions on the savanna eating a gazelle, chewing and chewing and the wet squelch of blood slipping through teeth. He thought he might vomit from the sound alone, but it was only when he lifted his light and illuminated the creatures on his parents' bed that he could see the damage.

Mom didn't have a head, her torso open and exposed, exploded like a piñata at a birthday party. Dad seemed to have been reduced to a rib cage and a spinal cord, his head lolling on the pillow as if he were merely sleeping, like he wasn't being eaten away by these... these things. Like he still had a body, could still catch a baseball and take Dave to the movies and lie half comatose in front of the TV.

Like any god damned moment, he'd wake up and it would all be just a horrible nightmare.

The creatures looked like the one that had attacked him in his bedroom: quadripedal, long-limbed and thin. Bodily, they resembled emaciated dogs, with long sharp claws for feet, and a head that seemed to split in two because of the wide, gaping mouth that housed all those sharp teeth, rows and rows of them, red with blood and illuminated by the beam of his flashlight. They were huge, perhaps five feet long, and spindly and tall like daddy longlegs. They snarled and chewed on his parents and it filled him with rage.

"HEY," Dave shouted, getting the attention of the creatures. There were two of them, hovering over his parents' corpses and going to town like they were at the early-bird special at Old Country Buffet. He was furious, and he was going to show them.

"COME GET IT, MOTHERFUCKER," Dave said, and the first one turned its entire body and faced him, mouth open and grinning and glistening bright red with his parents' blood. It hunched up, ready to pounce-- it leapt into the air and Dave dropped the flashlight and swung the bat as hard as he could. If the pained whimper was anything to go by, he'd gotten a damn good hit right in the creature's head. With a quickness he didn't even know he had, he picked the flashlight up just in time to see the other one lunging right at him. He brought the flashlight down, hard, on its snout and it fell to the ground. Holding the flashlight and the bat with both hands, he swung the bat down, right into the center of the creature's skull, and was satisfied to hear the crack of bone and feel his bare legs be splashed with brain matter.

The first creature was recovering from the blow, and when he could focus the flashlight on it, he saw that he had almost knocked its bottom jaw clear off. In a moment of temporary insanity, he thought, "God damn, I should be in the MLB with aim like that." It came towards him, royally pissed off if the glint in its eyes was anything to go by.

"Come here, you fucker," he said, low and dangerous, as the animal came closer and closer. It made weak, wet growling sounds as it stalked towards him. When it was close enough, he said, "You fucking ate my parents, you ugly son-of-a-bitch." Then he brought that bat down again, smashing the rest of the creature's jaw off, then brought the bat up again through the upper jaw. There was a snap and a jerk as the creature's neck broke cleanly, and it fell to the ground, limp and lifeless.

Dave took a moment and leaned against the wall, focusing the flashlight on a single spot of untainted carpet in the corner of the room so he wouldn't have to see the sad remains of his parents. He breathed deep and smelled the copper metallic smell of blood, tasted it in the air as if it had vaporized into the oxygen. He smelled something like sulfur or rotten eggs that he assumed came from those creatures (and how fitting that they would smell like Hell, he thought) and, faintly, a hint of clean linen. Mom had done laundry just yesterday and those things had completely destroyed her hard work.

Fuck.

He held the beam up. The bottom jaw of one of the creatures was at his feet. He knelt and surveyed it, counting sixteen rows of sharp, sharp teeth. He touched one lightly and winced, sucking a pained breath through his teeth. Just a bare touch drew blood.

Careful not to illuminate his parents' bed, he shuffled the animals' corpses out into the hall (because they didn't deserve to be in the same room as his parents) with his feet, then closed the door of his parents' room.

He was going to have to go this one alone.

When he had first suggested they start preparing for an Apocalypse several years ago, his parents had laughed and said, "Don't be silly, David. Those are just movies." They'd told him to stop being foolish with his obsession. "Get that crowbar out of the car, David. It's dangerous!"

He'd slid another bat under his parents' bed, but they hadn't found it and then they were devoured by beasts and he wanted to scream at them, "I told you! Why didn't you listen to me? Why didn't you fucking listen?!" Now they were dead, and he was totally alone in his dark house with no power, with who knew how many other animals in the house, God knew how many outside. He didn't know if he was the last person alive in the neighborhood, in Lima, in Ohio, in the US, in the entire world. All he knew was that, right now, he was alone, effectively breaking Rule 4.

The flashlight was pointing at his feet, and for the first time he realized that he was covered head to toe in blood, some of it the creatures' and some of it his own from the gash on his face. Gingerly, he reached up to feel it. His face was drenched with blood and sweat. The gash extended from his forehead clear down to his chin and it was deep. Only now was it starting to hurt, though.

Cautiously, Dave went downstairs to get other lights. He had a camping lantern in the coat closet that would provide sufficient light for him to illuminate his bedroom and the bathroom. He grabbed candles, as many as he could in his arms while still holding onto the bat, the flashlight and the lantern, and he grabbed the jumbo box of kitchen matches from the drawer under the microwave. Slowly, he made his way back up the stairs, all the while keeping his ears wide open in case another creature was lurking in the house. All was quiet, though, and he figured that there were probably only three of them. He'd taken care of them.

In his bedroom, Dave dumped the load from his arms onto his carpet. He turned on the camping lantern and the room was bathed in a soft glow of light. Long, dark shadows stretched from all directions. It wasn't ideal lighting, but it was what he had. Dave went looking for a bag. His plan, though not fully formed, was to leave the house. The way he saw it, he needed to find others and band together, and from the relative quiet, he didn't think there was some colossal-sized monster outside ready to squash him underfoot. He needed to pack, and fast. He pulled his WMHS hockey duffel out from his closet and began to throw things into it: the candles, a few changes of pants and shirts, underwear and socks (because you have to be practical, even when the world is ending; standards and all that. Wearing the same underpants for weeks at a time is kind of rank.), sweatshirts, heavy objects like old hockey trophies to be used as weapons. He found a sleeping bag on the top shelf and silently thanked God or whoever was up there for at least granting him this kind of luck.

After he'd packed some essentials, he picked up the lantern and went into the bathroom. He needed a shower, badly, and the fact that it was the Apocalypse meant he probably wasn't going to get a hot shower, or any kind of shower, for a long time. He set the lantern on the counter and peered into the mirror. In the darkness, he could see that the gash would have to be bandaged soon to avoid infection and promote healing, but it would eventually become a scar. "It's kind of badass," he thought.

When he stripped and stepped into the shower, that's when it hit him. The world was fucking ending. He was completely and totally alone. Two monstrous dog-like creatures had completely devoured his parents and he was all alone, didn't even know if there was another soul left on earth. In the stream of the water, Dave sat down and he stayed there for a long while, holding back all his tears because he wasn't going to cry, not now, not ever, not during this. He was going to be strong and he wasn't going to dwell on losses. Not yet, anyway, not when he had practical business to take care of.

After the shower and after he dressed, Dave slipped into his parents' room. He didn't bring the flashlight. In the darkness, he could almost pretend they weren't destroyed and maimed like they were.

"I'm going," he said. "I don't know when I'll be back... so, don't call, okay?"

He wanted to kiss his mother goodbye, but she had no cheeks on which to press a kiss, so he didn't. Instead he held back the sob that threatened to escape from his lips and picked up the framed picture on the bedside table. It was of the three of them, taken last summer on a beach in California. Happier times. He took the picture out of the frame, folded it up and stuck it into his pocket. Then he turned to gather his things and leave the house and go out into the world, facing the danger as strongly and proudly as he could.

**

Outside, it was dark. Completely. No sun or moon high in the sky to light his path, no street lamps or porch lights to guide him down the cold sidewalk. He tugged his letterman jacket tighter around him, wishing that he'd had the presence of mind to have invested in a more appropriate coat. The biting winter cold stung his eyes and he blinked around tears that threatened to fall. He wasn't sure if he was crying because of what he'd just experienced, or if he was crying because his eyes were drying out. He chose the latter, but if he was crying because of his parents, no one needed to know.

Dave had packed two bags: the duffel and a backpack, which he'd filled with the miscellany in the glovebox of his car. He'd made sure to grab all the bottles of Advil, Ibuprofen and Excedrin he could find in the house, and extra flashlights, batteries, his cellphone and its charger (just in case, he figured, because maybe he could find a backup genny somewhere and maybe he'd have a signal) and stuff them into the backpack. Tied to the duffel was his sleeping bag. He carried the bloodied bat in his right hand and in the left he swung the flashlight around the street to make sure there were no surprises.

The first thing he'd done, when he'd left, was try to start the car. The engine had failed to turn over, and he wasn't sure there would be anyone around who could even think about giving him a jump. He'd sat in the car and listened to the miserable "rrr-rrr-rrr" sound of the engine trying, and failing spectacularly, to turn on. In the end, he'd given up, grabbed the crowbar and emptied the glovebox and he hoofed it.

He didn't know where he was going. He was just moving, and he'd keep moving, until he found people.

In the distance, someone shrieked. Dave froze, waited. His breath came fast and quick, his heart pounded in his ears. Every nerve in his body vibrated with the need to flee but he stood his ground, tightened his grip on his bat, and waited. When another scream sounded far away to the north, he figured there wasn't anything in his immediate vicinity and he kept walking. He wandered aimlessly, moving the beam of his flashlight to and fro in the hopes of finally seeing another face. What he saw were cars, manicured lawns, basketballs, bicycles, doghouses. He even saw a chain on which he was sure a dog had been tied to, at one time. Now, he looked at it. It was cut short and ragged, the grass bloodstained.

Now that he could examine other properties, he noticed broken windows. He noticed bloody prints on the exterior walls of the houses. And he noticed how loud the silence was, just the wind rustling the dry branches of the trees lining the street. Come summer, they'd be bursting green and fresh and lively and it saddened him to think that the people living here, the children and the spouses and their dogs, wouldn't see how beautiful it would be.

When he looked down at his watch, it was almost 10:45am. There was not a single light in the sky.

**

He walked for hours. He'd always thought, in movies and books, that the whole "walking for hours" thing was an exaggeration. "No one can walk for hours," he thought.

Turns out, they can, and they do.

Dave walked for two, three hours and didn't see a single living soul. He didn't even see any creatures. All he could see was darkness, shattered glass, the occasional scrape of blood on the pavement or the siding of a house. He could only hear the breeze and the winter wind, mixed with the occasional terrified shriek somewhere far away as the creatures slaughtered entire families.

Eventually he found himself in the parking lot of a 7-11. He hadn't packed many provisions, mainly because he'd figured he'd have run into someone by now. At this point, it looked like he had a snowball's chance in Hell of finding another person. Using the bat, he smashed the glass of the sliding doors, knocking away shards that stuck to the frames, and ducked into the dark building.

He hadn't noticed there was a smashed window at the back of the store.

Quietly, quickly, he headed for the freezers and fridges, where bottles of water would be. He would pack as many as he could fit in the bags, leaving room for food. 7-11 wasn't exactly the height of class when it came to food, but when it's the Apocalypse, beggars can't be choosers. He would have to make do with a million bags of beef jerky, beef nuggets, SlimJims, chips, candies (to keep his sugar up) until he could find proper food.

It was when he was stuffing the fifth water bottle into the duffel that he heard the noise. It sounded like the inhale of a crying child, hitching up and up and up, and it ended on a high keen that sent shivers through Dave's entire body. He stopped, still bent over the duffel, and waited.

Something shuffled. He hadn't dropped his bat, just his bags, and it was advantageous. His arms had more range of motion; he could swing with much more ease now. Slowly, easily, smoothly he stood up and straightened, his hand clutching the bat so tight his knuckles turned white with the exertion. He could hear it breathing, loud and wheezing and scratchy like an old man, like a sick baby.

As slowly as he could, he turned to face it.

It was a strange creature, almost humanoid, but hunched over. It was completely hairless and stared at him with small, bright eyes. It looked almost innocent at first, until he saw its long, bony fingers with sharp pointed nails, the runner's legs that curled under it, poised to run and attack. For a long moment, the two of them stared at each other.

Then, it moved. It lunged forward, quick as lightning, and pushed Dave hard against the glass of the refrigerator. It pinned him with one long arm across his throat. Again it made that hiccuping inhale, and this time the inhale finished with a sound that made his blood run cold: a girlish giggle of pure glee. It was then that Dave noticed the creature had drawn one hand back, index finger with a nail as long and sharp as a needle pointed at his eye.

"Don't you even fucking dare," Dave growled, struggling in the creature's hold. It cocked its head curiously at him, blinked, and then. Then it smiled. It smiled and it seemed to mock Dave, staring at him with a look that said, _What are you going to do about it?_

"THIS," Dave said, jerking the bat up in reply. The creature released him, instead swinging its arms up high and snatching the bat out of Dave's hands.

"Shit," he said, and he watched in horror as the creature surveyed his bat with fascination before fixing those beady, evil eyes on him. It gripped the bat with both awful hands and snapped it clean in half. The crack sounded like a heart breaking.

"Shitshitshit," he said, because it was all he could think. They watched each other for a moment, and then he ran. He bolted down one of the aisles and headed for the register, praying the clerks kept a handgun or something down there.

There was a snarling sound, that inhale shaking down the aisles, and he chanced a glance back and saw it was scurrying toward him in the most terrifying version of a crab-walk he'd ever seen. Its head was rotated 180 degrees on its neck and it sped at him on all fours, stomach to the air. All the while it was smiling, as if it enjoyed this game, as if Dave were just a fun hunt, an adventure.

Swiftly, he leapt over the counter and ducked as fast as he could. The creature waited almost patiently on the other side of the counter. _I've got you now,_ it was saying. _Trapped. You're mine now._

"In your fucking dreams," Dave spat back. There, on the lowest shelf of the counter, was the handgun. Quickly, he checked to see if it was loaded. As quietly as he could manage it, he turned the safety off, cocked the gun, then stood.

The creature purred at him, cooed like a goddamned dove, sweet and innocent. It smelled like acid and smoke, burned Dave's nostrils. It knelt like an ape, its head rotating on its neck so that now the whole body faced him. They stared for a long time. Then the creature opened its mouth and a long, slender tongue darted out.

Dave raised the handgun and fired.

An inhuman scream rose from the creature's mouth as blood exploded out of the back of its head. It stood, stumbling backwards in agony, dragging its horrible needle-hands along the ground. It knocked bags of chips and candies off the shelves, gossip magazines, gum, batteries, and Dave climbed over the counter and he fired. He fired again and again and again and the creature wailed like a child calling for its mother, it shrieked and made such a ruckus that when he incapacitated it, in a moment of pure rage, he stood above it and brought his foot down hard in the center of its face to shut it up, feeling the bones shatter under his shoe.

He'd drenched the bottom of his jeans in blood, but he didn't give two shits about that. He was pissed the fuck off at this thing.

"You asshole," he said to it, moving his foot away. Its eyes had exploded and the top of its head had popped off like a champagne cork, splattering its brains across the linoleum. "You fucking ruined all these bags of chips. Now what the fuck am I supposed to eat?"

With a final kick to the head for good measure, Dave went back to his bags. Calmly, he filled them with water bottles, jerky, chips and candies and even a few sodas (as a treat). He went behind the counter and gathered as much ammo for the gun as he could find, all of it, and packed it carefully into his bag along side the gun (safety on, this time). As he left, he smashed open the case with the scratchcards and stole all of them, wondering if, should he win, he could still collect the money, even as society crumbled around him.

**

By noon, Dave was tired of walking. He found a park and grabbed some snacks and climbed to the top of the jungle gym with his flashlight, a bottle of water and a bag of peppered beef jerky. He sat perched on the top of the jungle gym and moved the flashlight back and forth across the woodchips on the ground. As he'd expected, it was completely deserted, void of human life. As he gnawed on his jerky, he found his thoughts drifting. A profound sense of sadness washed over him. He only knew that he was alive. For all he knew, everyone he'd ever known and loved could be dead. Hell, he'd already lost his parents. It was likely most of his friends were dead. The world as he knew it was being destroyed, bit by bit, by creatures the likes of which he'd never even _dreamed_ of.

Perhaps, he thought, Lima was the only place affected. Perhaps other cities would be safe. If he could just make it out of Lima, get to a neighboring town or make his way to Toledo, he'd be safe. Maybe he could even get help, save the survivors in town.

Just as he was about to descend from the jungle gym, he heard something; a cry, or something like it. At first he wasn't sure he'd heard it correctly because for a minute he thought he could hear someone calling for help, plaintively wailing for company. He jumped down from the jungle gym, drawing the handgun from the waistband of his pants (perhaps not the wisest place to put it, but certainly the most convenient). He waited.

"Someone-- anyone?" the voice said again. Dave inched towards it, pulling back the safety on the gun and aiming it in front of him, in case the voice belonged to a clever creature that could mimic the calls of a frightened human.

The voice was drifting from a bank of bushes bordering the park. Anxiously Dave hauled his bags up higher on his shoulders and quietly made his way to the source of the voice. When he got to a close yet reasonably safe distance from the voice, he said, "Who's there?"

"Oh shit!" the voice said and from the bushes popped a pale dirt-streaked face. The face was quickly followed by the lanky tall body of a boy wearing a denim jacket and pajama pants. "Holy fuck, shit, please tell me you're human, you're not one of them..."

"I'm not," Dave said. "Are you?"

"No!" the boy said. Only then did he notice the gun. He backed up into the bushes as quickly as he'd emerged from them. "Don't shoot, man, I swear to God I'm a human!"

Only the boy's terrified, wide eyes peered out from the bushes. Dave flicked the safety back on and slipped the gun back into his pants. "Alright, alright, Jesus, get the fuck out of the bushes."

The boy once again stepped out of the bushes. He was wearing house slippers and he shivered in the winter cold, wrapping himself up in the denim jacket. "Man, am I glad I found somebody," he said. He stuck out a dirty hand. "Name's CJ."

"Dave," Dave replied. Tentatively he took the boy's hand. It was slender and ice cold. "Holy shit, how long have you been out here?"

"I dunno, maybe an hour and a half?" The boy gestured vaguely behind him. "From... from that way, other side of town. You're the first-- living, intact human I've seen since I ran out of my house this morning." CJ started to tremble and sunk to the ground. "Jesus _fuck_. I am so glad to see you."

Dave nodded, setting his bags down. He rifled through one of them until he came up with a thicker sweatshirt, one of his dad's old hoodies. "Here, put this on, you look like you're going to die of hypothermia at any second. Do you got any shoes?"

"N-no," CJ said. "I just... they were eating my sister," he said, voice thick. "I was going to-- I was trying-- but they ran, and I couldn't save... They chased me out." He tugged half-heartedly on the sleeve of his jacket. "I grabbed this off the hook, don't know how I did it in my panic, but..."

"Right." Dave scoped the surrounding area. Dark houses surrounded the park. He didn't want to do this, but he figured more supplies couldn't hurt, and this CJ kid needed some proper clothes or he would die of exposure before the creatures could tear his guts out. "Okay, here's the deal," he said as CJ pulled the sweatshirt on over his jacket, "there's no way you're going to survive the way you're dressed, but I only got one sleeping bag. Chances are these houses around here have materials we can use to defend ourselves and keep ourselves healthy. The question is, are you comfortable with a little looting?"

CJ blinked and a cracked a hesitant smile. "What about the...?" he said, trailing off at the end, as if mentioning the things would bring them to him.

"Here." Dave handed CJ the crowbar. "Use it wisely, young padawan," he said with a smile. "Let's go."

The first house they approached was locked at the front door, but a broken window coated with blood faced the street. Dave swallowed, steeled himself and turned to CJ. "We might see some things."

CJ looked at him. Already the color was beginning to return to his face but he was still shaking like a leaf. Even so, he raised his eyebrows and said, "I just marched an hour and a half across this bloodbath of a town, I know what we might see in there."

With a final nod, Dave kicked at the broken shards at the bottom of the window frame and stepped into the house. The window opened into a dark sitting room, lavishly furnished. Were it not for all the blood, it might have been a beautiful room. Perhaps the owner of the house would sit here with a book on a cold Sunday, while winter sun filtered through the broken window shade now hanging limply from the top of the window.

The center of the room housed a luscious carpet, wet still with blood. Dave stared down at the blood--there was a trail leading from the patch out the doorway and into the foyer. Dave took the gun from his pants and cautiously moved forward into the foyer.

Nothing. Nothing but blood.

From the foyer, he could see into the kitchen. Something shuffled in there, and Dave waved to CJ behind him. The other boy came up close, knuckles white and trembling on the crowbar, nodding once to show he was ready. His face was sheet-white and in the dark light it seemed to glow, pale as the moon. Gently, Dave reached out a hand and slowly laid it on CJ's shoulder. _I won't let anything happen to you,_ he was trying to say. CJ stared at him and then cracked a small smile.

Dave entered the kitchen first. The creature was drenched in shadows at the opposite end of the room, feasting on something. Dave could barely see it from that distance, could only hear sickening tears and the snorts and breaths of the animal before them. As he got closer, he could see it was another one of the black dog-like creatures that had started this entire nightmare.

"You son of a bitch," Dave said, lifting the handgun. The creature looked up at him and it almost seemed to _smile._ Its eyes narrowed and it turned away from its prey, its mouth lined with blood and dripping. "I'll fucking kill all of you."

The creature stepped closer. Behind him, Dave could hear CJ's breath hitching, could practically hear the other boy's heart pound furiously in his chest, loud enough that Dave could hear it through the crazed beating of his own heart, which had mysteriously jumped into his throat and threatened to explode out his mouth.

The creature slinked closer, and Dave lifted the gun and when the creature looked at it, he pulled the trigger. Right between the eyes. It let out a horrendous scream and skittered backwards, dripping from the new hole between its eyes. _How the fuck could I miss the brain with that shot?!_ He thought to himself. No matter, though. The creature was incapacitated, and Dave got right up close to it and fired several more shots into various places on its body. One shot eventually proved fatal, as the creature suddenly jerked and gurgled before going completely still.

"Holy fuck," CJ said from somewhere behind him.

"What?" Dave panted, turning around to face the surprised and awe-stricken face of his new companion.

"Dude," CJ said, voice full of wonder, "do you work for, like, the army or something?"

Dave blinked and tried not to look at the mess of a human being that the creature had been snacking on not five minutes before. "No, why?"

"Because you are fucking _bad ass_ , man," CJ said, clutching the crowbar tight to his chest. "You just. Guns blazin', man, you don't even wait for the threat."

Dave shrugged, checking the gun and then stashing it back in his pants. "Uh, thanks, I guess," he said, "but really, I'm just a survivalist. No room for being scared when you're trying to survive." With that, he went back into the kitchen. "Here. Let's search the pantry; then, we'll go look for some blankets and bags and shit."

They swept and raided the house in just under an hour, combing through every room and collecting bags, blankets, clothes--anything not blood-stained and usable was scavenged. From the remains they stumbled upon, it was clear that a small family had lived in the house; their corpses were all mostly eaten, their flesh picked clean off their bones. Each new body made Dave feel sick, and as he stepped out of the house into the frosty air, laden with three new bags of supplies, he sunk to his knees and vomited into the flower bushes. CJ didn't make it as far, opting instead to collapse in the foyer of the house. From his position on the ground, Dave could hear his companion retching inside.

When he felt finished, he wiped his mouth and spat the taste of vomit from his mouth, getting slowly to his feet. He stretched and hiked his bags up his shoulders, waiting for CJ to finish inside. The boy stumbled out a few seconds later, his face now green and shining with sweat along his brow.

"You good?" Dave asked. His voice sounded like it was being squeezed through a very narrow space, forced and thin. CJ was panting, but he gave a weary thumbs up and headed towards Dave.

"Yeah," he said, "'m good." Dave handed him one of the three bags, watched him haul it up onto his back. "That was-- well, that was one of the worst houses I've seen."

"Tell me about it." Dave could still see the untouched heads of the children atop their skeletons, looking like they still slept, but their bodies, all gone--nothing but bones and blood. Dave knew he'd been lucky up until this point. CJ had watched those things eat his little sister. He assumed the same dog-like animals had devoured her just the same. If the look on CJ's face was anything to go by, Dave would say the other boy was thinking the same thing.

"Come on," Dave said quietly. "Don't dwell on it. We need to find others."

CJ nodded, shakily lifting the crowbar to his head in a tired salute. "Yes, Sir."

**

They camped the first night on the football field at the high school, though neither of them slept much. They lay on their backs under the tent, in their sleeping bags and wrapped up head-to-toe in down jackets. The temperature had remained constant all day, a result of the unending night, but it was still cold enough to see one's breath in the air. Not a single star blinked at them from the sky, nothing but inky black.

"Why?" CJ asked into the silence, after they'd been bedded down for an hour. "Why is this happening?"

It was a rhetorical question for sure. No way could CJ expect Dave to know what was happening. The world's top scientists were probably wondering the same thing. Why is this happening? What is going on? Where are these grotesque things coming from and what are they really? If only Dave were a scientist, he might be able to develop a hypothesis. But all he knew was football and survival; to ask him about organic creatures like these would be fruitless.

So, Dave didn't answer.

"I wonder if anyone else is out there," CJ continued, "and if they're searching just like we are?"

"You'd have to be crazy not to," Dave replied. "Safety in numbers. One of the first rules of horror movies."

CJ scoffed. "But, man, you _do_ realize this isn't a horror movie, right? This is _real_."

"Doesn't mean the rules don't apply, dude," he answered, annoyed. "Tropes exist for a reason, and if you and I wanna survive this thing, we should follow them."

CJ said nothing in response, shifting in his sleeping bag, the fabric rustling loudly in the tent's space. They lay in silence for a moment before CJ said, "How about you, man?"

"Hm?"

CJ turned his head to look at Dave curiously. "What's your story?"

Dave raised a brow, pulling one side of his lips down in confusion. "Uh, well," he said, "I woke up this morning and there was one of 'em at the foot of my bed. I beat the shit out of it, but his comrades had already eaten my parents. So, I figured I should just walk, try to find others. Not much else to tell."

"Okay," CJ said slowly, "but why do you have all these bad-ass skills?"

Dave couldn't keep himself from laughing. "What bad-ass skills? Dude, I told you before, I'm a survivalist. And I watch a _shit ton_ of horror movies."

"How old are you?" CJ asked abruptly.

"Tw... twenty? Why?"

CJ nodded thoughtfully. "I'm nineteen," he said, like it meant something.

"...'kay. Good to know."

"I'm just trying to get to know you, is all," CJ replied, sounding put-out. "Jeez."

Dave suddenly felt like a dick. He rolled over, turning his back to CJ. "Try to get some sleep, man. Tomorrow we set out bright and early."

He doubted the sun would even rise.

**

Somehow, they'd both managed to catch a few hours of sleep. At six in the morning, according to Dave's watch, they packed up camp and set out again, heading out of town. They talked in low voices, sweeping their flashlights to-and-fro across the streets. The silence made Dave's ears ring, put him on edge. He felt like he was walking in the eye of a storm, and soon there would be a swarm of _things_ waiting and ready to chomp him to little bits. Tasty monster breakfast.

_Focus, man,_ he thought. _You can't think about that. No time to think about that. Just focus on finding supplies, finding others._

"I hope we find someone else soon," CJ murmured, looking at Dave with his brow furrowed. "I'm starting to think this is more than just a Lima thing."

Before Dave could answer, there was a noise. Immediately, Dave's hand went to the gun in his pants. CJ gripped the crowbar tightly and held it like he was ready to hit a game-winning home run, straight and confident. They waited.

And then, out of nowhere, it came: a human-shaped figure, moving far too fast to not be suspicious. When it got into the light of the flashlights, it was clear that this was another creature, lithe and athletic. It had claws, talons almost, and it pinned the two of them in its sight and began to come closer, slowly at first.

"Get ready," Dave said, pulling back the safety on the gun.

The creature charged before either of them could react, pinning Dave to the asphalt and knocking CJ clear away. The thing was strong, stronger than Dave for sure--no matter how hard he struggled, the creature's grip never wavered, never loosened. It looked down at him, almost curiously. It bent down to sniff Dave. Seemingly satisfied with whatever he smelled, the creature opened its mouth and Dave could only watch as the creature's fangs erupted from its gums. Its breath smelled like garbage, like dead flesh, and Dave gagged, wriggling below the creature.

"CJ, god dammit, help me out over here!" he shouted. No response. "CJ! CJ!"

Shit shit shit. Shit. The creature seemed to almost _smile,_ drawing one sharp nail across Dave's throat. He could feel blood seeping out of the wound, like he'd cut himself shaving, and the creature sighed with satisfaction. It bent down, teeth growing ever larger. Dave fumbled for the gun to his right, hoping, catching his fingers along the butt--

There was a deafening crack and suddenly the pressure was gone. As quickly as the creature had been on him, it was now off, shrieking. Dazed, Dave watched someone raise a blunt instrument and bring it down again and again on the creature. Dave listened to it scream in agony before finally giving up, going limp. He turned his head to the side to stare at it; the teeth retreated into the gums and the light in its eyes went out. It gave a final, valiant gurgling growl and sank its weight to the ground.

"You alright?" came a voice, soft-spoken and scarily familiar. Dave looked back up from his vantage point on the ground. Standing above him was Kurt Hummel in a blood-stained henley, hair tousled, face streaked with dirt. He looked as surprised as Dave felt. " _Karofsky?_ "

"Hummel," Dave said, because he couldn't think of any other greeting. "Um. Thanks for that."

Kurt looked at him suspiciously, backing away a little. He didn't even offer a hand to help Dave up, guard up immediately. He carried a beam of wood, thick enough to damage but still easy to hold on to. The end was covered in blood.

"Yeah, sure," he said warily. "Those ones--yeah, those ones are pretty nasty." He cast a look at the creature's corpse before flicking his gaze across the street and nodding his head. "That your friend?"

Dave sat up, head pounding, and turned to look in the same direction. CJ was slumped against the curb. "Ah shit, yeah," Dave said, pushing himself up and jogging over to his companion. CJ let out a groan.

"Holy fuck," he said, cracking one eye open. "Fuck that thing."

Dave nodded, kneeling down to help CJ.

"Cracked my head on the curb," CJ explained. "I couldn't even fucking move, man. Sorry. I would've helped. It's a good thing someone else was here." He looked up at Kurt. "Hey man, thanks. I'm CJ."

"Kurt," Kurt replied, voice thin and guarded. "I'm glad I found you two. I was beginning to think..." he trailed off. "There's. Well, no one on my block survived, I don't think."

"Dude," Dave said softly. He reached out to lay a reassuring hand on Kurt's shoulder, but the boy flinched away; Dave withdrew his hand quickly. "Um. Sorry, man. That really sucks. Us too."

CJ was watching them silently. The quiet stretched on, and CJ said, "Well, you two seem to be familiar with each other."

"Classmates," Kurt replied quickly, looking to CJ. He didn't elaborate, and for that, Dave was grateful. He wondered if Kurt harbored a grudge against him because of their past; if, next time they were attacked, he'd let Dave get eaten. Dave didn't trust him and he was positive that Kurt didn't trust Dave either. The past lay between them, omnipresent. Kurt looked at Dave with a blank, neutral stare; at least it wasn't fear, or hate, like Dave had remembered back when life was normal--back when life was normal, just a fucking week ago--and he figured that was the best he was gonna get.

"We're gonna go swing by the high school," CJ said. "Gonna check, see if anyone's congregated there."

"Don't bother," Kurt replied with a dismissive sigh. "Been there, done that. Surrounded by creatures, not a single living person in sight. You two are the first people I've seen since yesterday. I was beginning to think I was the only person left."

Dave looked down, unsure of how to ask the question he needed and wanted to ask, but finally he mustered up the courage. "You wanna tag along with us?" At Kurt's uncertain look, he said, "Safety in numbers, man. We'll all be better off if we three have each other's backs."

Slowly, Kurt nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

Dave didn't miss the flood of warmth that raced through his chest and he could've screamed. Now was not the time to let his stupid pigtail-pulling crush rise again, but Kurt's thin body looked damn good, even in a stained and disheveled henley. Even covered in blood, the other boy was still as attractive as ever.

_God. Dammit._ He was so fucked.

**

They walked in an awkward silence for what felt like hours, CJ between Dave and Kurt. His shoulders had drawn up around his ears and he kept glancing at Dave and Kurt alternately, as if waiting for an explosion. Dave didn't blame him. The tension surrounding him and Kurt was so thick it was almost tangible, heavy around their shoulders, and he could only imagine how awkward CJ felt standing between the two of them.

"We should find transportation," Dave said. His voice sounded loud and hoarse in the silence.

"Good luck with that," CJ replied. "Unless you know how to hotwire a car."

"Good thing my dad owns an auto shop," Kurt said, heading for a truck parked on the curb. He was halfway there when he stopped in his tracks.

"Owned," he said, quietly. "Own _ed_."

Dave and CJ exchanged glances, unsure of what to say. Kurt's slumped shoulders lasted for all of two seconds before he straightened up and walked towards the truck again. He moved with determination, his posture stiff and gait strong, indicating that, whatever that moment had been, it was over now. He was effectively closed off. Dave pushed his lips into a thin line. Whatever Kurt was thinking or feeling, it wasn't his problem, and, judging by the look of the other boy, it was never going to be.

Kurt disappeared into the cab for all of two seconds before popping his head back out. "We got lucky, boys," he said with a forced smile. "Spare set of keys in the sun visor. Who's first shift?"

CJ raised his hand. "I'll do it," he said, slinging his bag into the truck's bed.

"Okay," Dave said, clapping his hands together as he threw his own belongings in with CJ's. "Let's do a few quick supply runs, stock up, and roll out." He fished into the pocket of one of the duffels and handed Kurt a flashlight. "Arm yourselves," he reminded them. "Let's get the fuck out of here."


	2. Chapter 2

Dave's watch told him it was just approaching dawn, but it was still dark as night outside. He let out a sigh and drummed his fingers absently against the steering wheel, the crackle-hiss of the radio the only sound breaking the unearthly silence. In the passenger seat, CJ fiddled with the knobs of the radio. He'd been doing so for the past hour, searching for a signal, and though the sound of static was beginning to annoy Dave, he said nothing. Better to be annoyed and get a signal eventually, than to miss their chance at a rendezvous just because he couldn't handle a little white noise. In the backseat, Kurt slept, curled up on himself. It didn't look like a very comfortable position to sleep, but probably much more comfortable than the position Dave had himself been in not too long before during Kurt's shift at the wheel. He was crammed tight in a little ball, head pressed against the door, and - to Dave's surprise - asleep like a log. How he could sleep like that boggled Dave's mind. During his own siesta, he'd been tossing and turning, and now his neck was sore and his mind foggy with sleep.

"So, what's the deal with you and Kurt?" CJ suddenly asked, pausing in his quest for a radio signal.

The question surprised Dave. "What?"

"You and Kurt," CJ repeated, fixing his gaze on Dave. "You obviously have... well, _something_ going on."

"It's nothing," Dave replied quickly. "It's in the past, doesn't matter now."

"Forgive me if you will, but it kind of does, seeing as now I'm the only stranger here." CJ shrugged. "I'd just like to know if I'm going to have to break up any fights down the road."

Dave sighed. "Let's just say I was kind of a dick a while back, and he got the brunt of it."

"You have a crush on him?"

That caught Dave off-guard. He inhaled sharply, saliva flying into the back of his throat and choking him. He exploded in a fit of coughs. When he finally managed to regain his composure, he turned to CJ bewildered. "The fuck, man?"

CJ shrugged, though his nonchalant expression was also clouded with concern. "I'm not blind, you know," he said. "I've been watching you guys. The way you look at him? Were you guys like, together or something?"

"No! No, nothing like that! Jesus, man, what the fuck!"

"So, you do have a crush on him?"

"No!"

CJ raised an eyebrow but said nothing. His skeptical look said it all.

For a moment they stared at each other: Dave, replaying the memories of the day since they'd met Kurt to see where he'd slipped up and let his real feelings show; CJ, waiting for Dave's confession.

"I don't," Dave said, voice hard and final. "No more questions."

CJ rolled his eyes but returned to his seat. "Alright," he said slowly.

They rode the rest of the way in absolute silence.

**

They tried to drive through Cincinnati. It was only a few hours away, after all, and being a major city center, they were sure there'd be something left.

Cincinnati had been destroyed. Something very large and very heavy had made its way through the city. They drove down the main roads and through residential areas, CJ steering the car as gingerly as he could through the tangle of crashed cars and the debris of broken, fallen buildings. Not a single human soul in sight and hardly any movement. Occasionally, from the corner of their eye, they'd see something flicker. Perhaps a creature, or a distant-burning fire.

It wasn't the destruction that surprised them, though. No, what surprised them most of all was the complete lack of corpses.

"What is happening?" Kurt had asked from the passenger seat. It was a rhetorical question. Dave pressed his face to the side window of the truck's back seat and watched the crumbling buildings pass, the bricks and concrete stained with soot.

**

He was supposed to be sleeping, but he couldn't. The truck rumbling beneath him as they drove down the highways was soothing enough, but he was too big for the backseat of the cab. He could barely even turn his head in the cramped space. Still, it was a quieter, smoother ride than in the bed of the truck, so he couldn't complain too much.

It wasn't just the lack of comfort that woke him up, though. It was the low voices in the front seats that initially stirred him. He wasn't prone to eavesdropping, but he had heard his name mentioned in the conversation and the curiosity was too great to ignore.

"We have a bit of a history," Kurt was saying. Dave couldn't see him, could only see the fabric of the seat he lay on. He breathed as quietly as possible.

"Do tell," CJ said quietly. "Just keep talking. Keep me awake."

Kurt sighed. "In high school, he was a real asshole."

"Yeah, he mentioned that."

"As he should have. He treated me like shit." A sigh. "I mean, everyone treated me like shit at some point or another, but he was really the worst of it. He used to be physically violent and intimidating--"

"--and he's not now?"

"He's definitely different, believe me." A pause. "For the longest time, I had no idea why. I mean, I think I thought _something_ was up, but I've always been kind of generous, giving people the benefit of the doubt. Some of my bullies became my friends, you know. But it wasn't until he kissed me--"

"He kissed you?" Disbelief. "No shit. No wonder he doesn't want to talk about it much."

"I imagine it's not a good memory for him," Kurt said softly, voice sympathetic. "It wasn't exactly a good moment for me, either."

"So, what happened?"

"I guess I just pushed him too far, you know. When someone is in that much pain, but they don't have the words to let it out... They do something drastic. That was what he did." A lull in the conversation, Kurt collecting his thoughts. "I don't think he's good at showing emotion. I don't think he wants to show emotion. I think he thinks it makes him weaker, that he has to be this tough guy who won't let himself just hurt a little. So he had all this anger, this sadness, this hatred for... for himself, I guess, that he was broadcasting onto me... and he didn't know how else to tell me... so he kissed me."

"Huh."

"And that, I think, was when everything clicked. I mean, things got really sticky after that, and I'm still kind of wary of him, but I understand him. I understand him and I really want to help him. I have ever since that day. I just think about how I would be if I couldn't let my emotions show, and I can't even imagine it. I don't know how he does it."

"He's pretty good at it, huh?"

"Yeah. Thing is, I know he wants to let it out. And he should. But he's not going to, I don't think, not for a while anyway."

"Wow."

"Anyway, that's the story," Kurt said, finality in his voice. "It's... complicated."

"Do you hate him?"

A pause. Dave held his breath.

"No, I don't," came the reply. "It's kind of the opposite, actually. I don't even know how I feel about him, other than I just... really want to help him. I've been where he is, you know. It's not me that he wanted to hurt, it was himself. I was just the closest manifestation of everything he hated inside himself."

"Dave Karofsky," CJ murmured, voice strangely awed. "You really are one of those mysterious types, aren't you?"

"Not mysterious," Kurt clarified. "Just scared."

"You really have him all figured out, don't you?"

"No, not even close. He still does things that surprise me. But I think I understand where he's coming from." He paused again. "I forgive him," he said quietly, almost whispering. "My contempt is nothing compared to the contempt he feels for himself. I couldn't hurt him half as badly as he is hurting himself. I just wish he'd let people help him."

"Good luck with that," CJ snorted. Kurt made an agreeable noise and the conversation ended, leaving Dave to stare at the back of the seats, his brain tangling his thoughts together like cat's cradle, leaving him to unravel it all himself.

**

The sound of crunching bones jolted Dave awake. They were camped in the truck bed, the three of them crammed in there head-to-feet like sardines in a can. The truck's cab offered sufficient shelter, but it was small and cramped. Not the most comfortable place to sleep, but they hadn't found any better alternatives. The houses they'd passed had either been infested or crumbling; avoid the cities, the neighborhoods, take shelter in the country. That had been the plan since they'd left Lima.

It took Dave a few moments to realize the noises he'd heard were in his head. He didn't remember what he'd been dreaming about, which was a blessing. He could do without the nightmares. They'd seen too many things now, watched too many people fall victim to the gnashing teeth and sharp talons of the creatures as they fed. It was better that he could only remember his nightmares as fuzzy images in the back of his head, like a movie he'd seen once and only vaguely remembered.

He placed a hand to his head. The dehydration was giving him a near-constant migraine. As he tried, uselessly, to soothe his aching head, he noticed something in the dim light of one of the camping lanterns. On the other side of CJ - who slept like a log, lucky bastard - Kurt's sleeping bag was flat; too flat. For a brief second, panic flew through Dave's blood stream. His stomach fell to his toes. Then he saw it, outside the cab's window, an orange light, a few yards from the truck.

So, there he was, then.

Dave gingerly climbed over CJ, trying his best not to wake him up. His foot grazed CJ's arm as he moved and his companion let out a sleepy, indignant grumble before rolling over and resuming his slumber. Dave spent a brief second wondering how CJ could sleep so soundly at a time like this, then pushed the cab's back window open and climbed out. At the last second, he grabbed one of the camping lanterns. There was always a risk of attracting something, but it was so god damn dark out there. Even so, at least with the camping lantern, they'd be able to see the creatures coming.

Kurt sat in the field, a lit cigarette poised in his hand, staring into the distance. The sky was starless and pitch-dark, the only source of light coming from the cigarette's ember. He seemed not to notice Dave's approach. If he did, he made no sign of it. He'd changed from the blood-stained henley not too long ago and now a thick, oversized fleece shielded him from the cold. Even disheveled and grungy, he maintained a graceful air. It was the performer in him for sure; always so composed, so maintained. Dave didn't know how he managed to hold himself together, when Dave himself was so close to crumbling, held together only by the thin twine of his horror movie theories.

"I didn't know you smoked," Dave said, finally. Kurt's lack of reaction told him that he knew Dave had been standing there the whole time.

"I don't," Kurt replied, even as he lifted the cigarette to take a deep drag. "It's terrible for you. Every time you smoke you lose 11 minutes of your life. Not that 11 minutes matter much in this place." Dave sat down next to him and set the lantern in front of them. He moved to turn it on.

"Don't."

"Why?"

"Look." Kurt gestured to the sky with the lit cigarette.

Dave looked up. Only then did he notice that he could actually see Kurt now, despite the moonless night. The sky was lit with a sort of glow; the whole world was. It wasn't much light, but it was enough to see.

"Huh."

"Something in the atmosphere," Kurt said simply. "It's like moonlight, only, you know, fucked up."

Dave nodded and moved his hands away from the camping lantern. They sat in a neutral sort of silence, not awkward or companionable, just thoughtful. Dave wasn't sure how much time passed. It could have been one minute or one hour for all he knew. It stretched between them, a gulf he could not cross.

He snuck a glance at Kurt. He'd be lying if he said he didn't still feel a pull to him. The other boy had a weird effect on Dave, made him feel both amazing and terrible at the same time. He was intimidated by the other's presence, and yet constantly yearned for it.

It had been a long time since they'd last reunited. Kurt had switched schools, then gone off to college. Dave had kept tabs on him on Facebook, via sparse status updates (Finn Hudson is so proud of his brother for getting a part in RENT!) and what he could glean through casual perusing. He'd gotten himself a boyfriend - Rick, was it? - and then chased his dreams through the grungy streets of New York. Dave had stayed at home, working for a local diner, taking classes part time at the community college; they lived in two worlds, completely separated. And they were better off that way. Now their worlds had collided, and they were no longer living their own experiences, but a shared one. The three of them - Dave, CJ, Kurt - were now inexplicably intertwined.

"Can I ask you something?" Dave asked. The silence that had divided them shattered; Dave's voice sounded so loud in the darkness that it almost felt like he'd shouted it.

"Sure," Kurt said. Dave was a little taken aback by this, by the ease of Kurt's reply. Sure, they were in this together, but Dave hadn't expected Kurt to let his guard down so easy. Now the other boy's face was still carefully shuttered, but he was willing to answer whatever question Dave had.

"Why were you in town? Aren't you supposed to be in New York?"

Dave knew this was a personal question when Kurt turned to look back out into the field and took a drag from his cigarette. The pungent smoke curled into the air and dissipated slowly into the ethereal glow, came from Kurt's lips like a waterfall when he finally spoke.

"Things didn't work out." Dave opened his mouth to ask more, but Kurt cut him off: "What about you?"

"Huh?"

"Well, weren't you supposed to be some huge football-hockey-whatever prodigy?" Kurt looked at him now. "What happened to that?"

Dave sighed, leaning back on his hands. "Things didn't work out," he parroted, as if this answer would suffice. He knew Kurt had so many questions now, and he had a series of his own, so many he wanted to ask.

"You go first," Kurt said softly. When Dave looked up at him, his eyes were soft and honest, guarded but earnest.

Dave shrugged. "Not much to tell, really." He looked down at his knees, away from Kurt. "Things just kind of fell to shit senior year. Family problems, you know. I lost my scholarships and we couldn't afford college by ourselves, so I had to put those aside, start doing something else. When this all started I was working at Statton's, bussing tables and washing dishes, and going to classes at the community college." He cocked his head, thinking. "I would have liked to go to Ohio State," he said wistfully. "But, you know."

"Yeah," Kurt sympathized. He sounded like he meant it. Dave couldn't find it in him to look up now. He didn't want to see Kurt's face, the pity or the sympathy or whatever. He didn't want to see it and feel like a fucking moron like he had in high school, didn't want to jeopardize the group, or himself, any more than he already had by asking questions.

"What's your story?" he asked, taking his mind off the thoughts. He began to pull blades of grass from the field, just to give his hands something to do, to occupy his gaze and focus on something else to remove the temptation to look up at Kurt. "You were doing pretty well in New York, weren't you?"

"How do you know?" Kurt asked. The sound of his voice was playful, but Dave looked up anyway. "Do some Facebook stalking?"

"No! No, that's not--"

"Relax, Dave. You're not the only one here guilty of keeping track of people they have a history with." Kurt smiled then, genuinely. Dave gulped, unable to look away from Kurt in that moment. Had Kurt been keeping an eye on Dave, too? That meant... Dave didn't know what it meant. Didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but there it was. Suddenly he was a lot more nervous, but he couldn't put his finger on exactly why, or why his heart suddenly skipped a little beat.

"First semester was great," Kurt said, looking away. "Met a nice boy, got the lead in the school musical." He scoffed. "I should have known it was too good to be true. Second semester was just a total shitstorm. That's the only way to put it. The boyfriend cheated on me, I failed my calculus class; I couldn't handle the pressure. All these things just kept piling up. Halfway through the second semester I had this complete mental breakdown, so I came home to 'catch my breath,' so to speak." He shook his head sadly. "Some break, huh? I leave one disaster to come home to an even bigger one."

"Tough shit, man."

"Tell me about it."

The silence returned but didn't feel so distant this time. It was like they'd built this little bridge, spanning the crevasse between them. It was rickety, and delicate, but it was there.

They sat there until Dave's watch alarm went off at what was supposed to be six in the morning and set off on the road again.

**

Neither of them mentioned it, but they kept doing it, sitting out at night - or day, or whenever they camped - and just sitting there in silence. Occasionally, they'd say something, but the quiet was a welcome change. It was a controlled quiet, one they could easily remove, unlike the unnatural silence that now covered the world like a thick blanket. The silence they kept between them was like a stepping stone, letting them bridge the gap.

They continued driving, scavenging what they could. They didn't encounter many survivors, just creatures. There seemed to be more of them than in the beginning and they came in all shapes and sizes now, slithering and sliding and crawling along the streets of the neighborhoods they found.

CJ wound up being one of the things that kept them sane. He kept a cool head most of the time, but also told a mean joke. Around the campfires after rough fights, he would tell a few bad puns and get Kurt and Dave to crack smiles. Sometimes Kurt would double over with laughter at the stories CJ told, anecdotes about his family, shenanigans from their school days. They all steadfastly ignored the knowledge that those times may be gone forever. Now they just appreciated the rare opportunities they could get to smile.

Dave liked them well enough but there was a well inside him, deep and dark. He felt trapped at the bottom of it, fallen down and unable to climb back up. He felt very lonely, lonely and cold.

Such was the feeling during the apocalypse. Loneliness was all part of the packaged deal. You wanna survive, you gotta be lonely. You gotta be brave.

Sometimes he wanted to crack. When they shared stories that made them sad, when CJ lost that sparkle in his eye and stared into the flame with his eyes glazed over and glassy as he reminisced about the people he'd lost; when Kurt bit back tears as he recalled his family over dinner, the release cathartic; Dave wanted to join in. He wanted to tell them everything that he was feeling, but he kept himself on a short leash. When they asked questions, he answered them as succinctly and as clinically as possible.

If either CJ or Kurt had a problem with that, they didn't say anything. Still, Dave didn't miss the way Kurt looked at him when he thought he wasn't looking: eyes concerned, brow furrowed in confusion, studying Dave with a sad expression. And then one night, he leaned over to him, put a hand on top of his, and said, "You are allowed to cry, you know."

He didn't say anything in response. He got up and walked away instead.

**

They first encountered The Horror in Lake Forest, Illinois, just outside Chicago in a cul-de-sac on a tree-lined street. The Horror had been a nickname to come naturally; they had no other way to refer to it, so they called it The Horror.

They'd stopped off to make a quick supply run and check nearby houses. They'd made it a habit, ever since passing through Indianapolis and realizing they needed more gas. They searched high and low in each city and had just happened to stop by the neighborhood in the Chicago area.

It had been CJ who had noticed it first, a large shape hunched over something and very clearly moving. He'd drawn Dave's attention quietly and pointed at the strange figure, speaking in a hushed voice.

"Think it's human?"

"No way," Dave replied. Its skin was hairless and jaundiced and a smell like rotting meat was emanating from it. It made Dave gag a little. "It... looks like it's eating."

"It hasn't spotted us yet," Kurt piped up. He was still carrying his board around, though now it was more doused in blood and splintering. He needed a new weapon, that was part of this mission, and so he was hanging back just in case his weapon broke. Now he stood directly behind Dave and CJ, between their shoulders, watching the shape shift and jerk above the corpse.

"Shh," Dave said, creeping forward. He unlocked the safety on the pistol and raised it.

Suddenly the creature leapt up and moved away. As it stood, two large wings unfolded from its back, though calling them wings was a rather generous term; they were more like the skin flaps of a flying squirrel, veiny and translucent. The corpse of the young girl it had been "feeding" on lay still for only half a second before something began.

It started with a twitch of a finger. The girl's arm jerked suddenly, and then her whole body began to rotate. Her head rolled back, bones snapping into place, and from her shoulders two large, sharp claws emerged, curling like the legs of a spider, touching the ground with a click like nails on wood. Her limbs elongated and she let out a low, gurgling groan, twitching as she rose from the dead. Even as she transformed, she maintained a semblance of humanity: a bracelet dangled from her wrist; she still had ten fingers.

And when it was all over, she turned and looked straight at them with black eyes and smiled. Then she wasn't human anymore.

In the span it took for her to transform, The Horror had moved on to the next corpse in the vicinity and the corpse it had been transforming was beginning to shift.

"What the fuck!" Kurt exclaimed.

"Shit, move," Dave said, pushing Kurt back and snagging CJ with the crook of his elbow. "We gotta move, _now._ "

"What?"

"That thing is making the bodies of people into other creatures. We're fucked if we stay here, look how many corpses are lying around!"

The girl-creature rushed at them, moving inhumanly fast, and Dave fired a blast right between her eyes. That got The Horror's attention. It turned its ghastly head to look straight at them and then began to move towards them as the bodies around it began to rise.

"Jesus, I've never seen so many of them!" CJ shouted. "We gotta get out of here!" With that, the boy turned and began to sprint back towards the truck parked at the end of the block.

The Horror leapt forward, reaching one hand out towards Kurt, and Dave grabbed the other boy's arm and threw him behind him, pushing him to run away. Dave fired the gun multiple times, piercing The Horror's body, but it kept coming.

"ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE, DAVE?! RUN!" Kurt shouted from somewhere behind him, and The Horror wrapped one claw around Dave's ankle. Dave popped another shot, right into its wrist, and The Horror's grip released instantly, allowing Dave enough time to scramble away. Kurt grabbed his hand and they bolted towards the truck. By that point, CJ had started the truck and The Horror was chasing them, galloping behind them, and as CJ pulled away from the curb, Kurt leapt into the truck. He held out his hand and Dave took it, held on tight as the other boy hauled him up into the bed as The Horror's ghastly claws once again stretched towards them. They sped off, leaving it in the dust.

Dave watched the cul-de-sac in Lake Forest disappear into the distance, listening to the screams of dying people and the snickering whispers of The Horror and its friends.

**

That night they set up a campfire just next to the truck bed. Above it, potatoes on skewers roasted unevenly; a wire grill held up a can of Spaghetti-Os, to share. Their vegetable supplies were running low, and they had thrown "conservation" to the wind when one of the potatoes had sprouted what looked like a full plant. Now they were cooking the last of them above the crackling fire.

No one said a word, each of them reflecting in the events of the day. The Horror stayed in Dave's mind, the horridness of the creature and what it did to human beings. Turning little girls, mothers, brothers into hideous, blood-thirsty monsters. He knew they were all thinking the same thing: _Did this happen to them, to the people we thought died in Lima?_ He couldn't bear the thought of his parents rising and roaming the streets as inhuman, unearthly creatures. It filled him with a sadness he couldn't articulate, a type of distress that dug through his very body and down his stomach.

The silence was broken by a wail. CJ had begun to sing, the first noise any of them had made since Lake Forest.

_O, Death_  
 _Won't you spare me over 'til another year?_  
 _Well, what is this, that I can't see_  
 _With ice cold hands takin' hold of me..._  
 _Well, I am Death, none can excel;_  
 _I'll open the door to Heaven or Hell..._

CJ sang and Dave and Kurt listened. The fire popped between them all, warming their limbs, distracting him so that Dave almost missed the way Kurt's hand suddenly grabbed his in the light of the flame. They ate their meals in silence, the only background noise the gentle roar of the fire and CJ, singing his sorrow into the darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

Dave realized his crush was back in full force when Kurt saved his life for the second time.

In the days after encountering The Horror, there was a nervous fear hanging in the air. The fear was always there, of course, but this one was different. Now they knew the origin of most of the creatures and this was what troubled them most of all. How many of those creatures had been survivors just like them? How many of them had had families?

He couldn't stop himself thinking about his parents. Wondered if they'd sprouted long claws and spider legs, if they now wandered in a state of grotesque undead living. He never said anything about these thoughts, keeping them squished down inside him, swept under the rug like a secret he could just ignore.

It was during one of these reveries that Dave got attacked. It was a rare lapse in judgment; he'd just been going out for a piss, that was all, into the field next to the truck, and his guard had been down for no more than a fraction of a second before something was leaping out of the bushes and launching itself at him. It tackled him to the dirt, its jaws snapping frantically at his face. The creature nicked him, just a cut on the side of Dave's eye, and the smell of blood made the creature go wild. It scraped wildly at him with its long talons, tearing his jacket sleeves to shreds.

In a flash, it was off him, and above him was Kurt Hummel, lowering his boot-covered foot and staring hard, emotionlessly, at the monster as it regained its senses. It stood, ready to leap again; Dave rolled out of the way and onto his feet as fast as he could, reaching for the gun in his holster, but Kurt pushed him out of the way. He shot a glance back at Dave when he did so, so quick that Dave hadn't had time to really decode it, and then he was back to the monster, raising his weapon high and bringing it down again and again. With each strike, he brought the board down with more and more force, so that it began to splinter with a sickening crack. Dave only caught a glimpse of his face, expecting to find rage but finding only flatness.

When he was satisfied with the carnage, he turned back to Dave, panting slightly with the exertion of taking the monster down.

"You saved me," Dave said, dazed.

"You'd do the same for me," Kurt replied nonchalantly. "Don't say I never did anything for you." He said it with a ghost of a smile. He patted Dave on the shoulder, friendly, and then began to walk away.

Dave stood there, dazed, waiting for his senses to kick back in. He knew Kurt was only doing his duty as a group member by coming to his aid (and where the hell was CJ? Probably sleeping; that habit would get him killed one day), but there was something else in it. Perhaps it was the playful half-smile he'd flashed at Dave as he walked away, or the friendly way he touched Dave when they talked or fought or mourned. He didn't know what it was that was happening between them, why Kurt didn't touch CJ the way he did Dave, and he didn't bring it up. He marched back to the truck and went to wake CJ up to yell at him, and was happy when he got back to hear Kurt scolding him instead.

**

Kurt got injured during a supply run and in the moment between the monster attacking and the monster being taken care of, Dave had felt a fear that he hadn't ever really experienced before. It was not fear of the monster, or what the monster might do to him, but what it might do to _Kurt_ that scared him. It was a mild twinge in the back of his head, but it was there.

The creature had gotten a good slice of Kurt's arm in the battle, though of course Kurt had emerged victorious. Still, his forearm was torn in three long scratches, deep enough to require some form of first aid.

That was how they wound up sitting in the bed of the truck, so close they were breathing the same air, with Dave cradling Kurt's arm gently. Outside, CJ sat on the roof of the cab with the pistol, keeping watch, but things had been quiet since they'd returned. Dave had immediately offered to look after Kurt's arm. He told himself it was because he knew how to do basic first aid and could definitely work out how to sanitize a cut with iodine, refused to acknowledge the little voice somewhere in him that wanted to look after Kurt because he wanted to be close to the other boy, because he wanted an excuse to be alone.

He had finished sanitizing the cut as best he could and was wrapping it up tight with an ACE bandage when Kurt spoke: "Do you wonder what happened to everyone else? Back in Lima?"

Dave shook his head. "No," he lied. "It's a detriment. They're dead, I'm alive. I can't waste time or energy being sad about them."

The silence made Dave look up. Kurt was watching him, eyes curious and confused. "So, you don't care?" he asked. There was a hint of surprise in there: _how could you not care? How could you lack so much empathy?_

"It's not that," Dave replied, returning to his work with the bandage. "It's just. It seems kind of fruitless, you know. I have other things to worry about, I can't spend time thinking about the people I've lost. Last time I did, it almost got me killed."

"I think about my dad a lot," Kurt murmured, voice trembling. "If he... turned into one of those things, or if he died peacefully... And I think about all my friends from high school. Are they okay? Is this a nationwide thing?" He paused, seemingly to collect his thoughts, but when Dave looked up he saw that Kurt was crying. "I wonder if I'll turn into one of those. I'm so scared all the time. I'm so tired of being scared all the time."

"Kurt," Dave demanded, voice firm as he looked up to meet Kurt's eyes dead-on. "I promise, I will not let you turn into one of those things. I'll protect you, and I'll protect CJ, because you'd do the same for me. So don't be scared of those things, okay?"

"Are you scared?" Kurt asked, cocking his head. His eyes were wet with unshed tears.

"Me? Nah," Dave lied again. "They're just animals."

Kurt was quiet, studying Dave. It made him uneasy, like a bug under the microscope, a specimen to be scrutinized. Sometimes he thought Kurt saw him as a foreign creature, completely lacking empathy, sympathy, everything that made him human. Like he had been replaced by a robot or an alien.

It wasn't that Dave didn't feel empathy. It was just that if he let himself show it, show any of it, to CJ or Kurt, it would be the beginning of the end. Keep everyone at an arm's distance, trust no one. He repeated his mantra in his head every time he had the urge to just let go. Part of surviving was being strong, and part of being strong was not letting his emotions show, not letting himself get closer than ever to Kurt and CJ. Everyone at an arm's distance. Never let them see you cry.

He wanted to. God knew he wanted to. It was building in him like steam, pressure in his chest that he was trying so hard to hold on to. He wanted to mourn, wanted to have just a few moments to feel _normal_ again, but in such a hostile environment... he just couldn't risk it. Wouldn't risk it. His life was more important than his empathy.

"Wanna know a secret?" Kurt said quietly. Dave didn't look up, pretending to focus hard on the bandages, when Kurt slipped a hand under his chin and lifted his face up to meet his eyes. "It's okay to let it out. You can still survive if you cry."

"I don't need to let anything out," Dave huffed. He fastened the metal clips to the bandage and drew his hands away like Kurt might burn him. "There, you're done." Then he leapt out of the bed of the truck and went to work preparing the campfire for that night, steadfastly ignoring the looks he knew Kurt was giving him as he worked.

Kurt didn't press the issue, but all that night he watched Dave with an expression he couldn't interpret. Dave made sure to keep the shades drawn, to shutter up his emotions. He was fine, he was _okay_ , he was surviving and that was all that mattered. Emotions only hindered him. Of course he couldn't stop himself from feeling them, strong and unavoidable, but he could stop himself from letting them take control. He wouldn't let them in, not because he didn't want them there, but because he _couldn't_ let them in. Letting them get close to him terrified him.

He told himself it was because he was scared that it would hinder his survival. But inside he knew - deep down, he really knew - that he was scared that if he let them in, he couldn't handle losing them. In the apocalypse you inevitably lose things, and if you let yourself love them, you are only setting yourself up for disaster.

So he kept Kurt out as long as he could. He didn't want to love him, didn't want to get close. It would make it easier in the long run, for both of them.

**

 

The dog joined them somewhere between Iowa and Nebraska. CJ had heard her snuffling around the truck and had damn near shot her dead until he realized she was just a little thing; squat and stumpy, swollen in the middle. She looked up at him with these big, trusting eyes and CJ, the idiot, was head-over-heels. He'd begged with Dave, who was going to say no, and eventually won when Kurt's tie-breaking vote went to keeping the dog on board. ("We can't just abandon her, that's horrible! We wouldn't abandon another person, would we?" had been a lazy argument at best, but Dave hadn't been able to counter it convincingly.)

That was how they wound up with Brisket, another survivor searching for solace in the wasteland.

**

Somewhere outside of Harlowton, Montana, in a field, an airy farmhouse sat in the darkness. Surrounding it was an expanse of nothingness, fields sprouting with tall grains. Dave had spotted it out in the distance while driving through the empty rural town and had immediately pointed it out as a good place to hide out. He'd pulled into the front yard, noticing the distinct lack of vehicles and movement on the property.

They approached the house with great caution, armed and ready. Brisket, a dog smarter than she let on, heeled close to CJ and bristled quietly, never making a sound. Slowly, Dave pushed the door open.

Something darted in the shadows. Dave flicked the flashlight on and illuminated the twisted shape of an animal crouched in the corner. It smiled wickedly at them, its teeth yellowed and sharpened to points, and moved towards them, dragging its knuckles along the ground like an ape. Dave raised the revolver, ready to fire, but didn't get the chance. Kurt had leapt forward and swung, hard, at the creature's head with his new weapon of choice, a heavy baseball bat stolen from a sporting goods store somewhere in the Dakotas. He hadn't had much of a chance to use it and his enthusiasm for bludgeoning the creature filled Dave with a strange sense of happiness. _I could survive with you,_ he thought, almost dreamily. If Kurt hadn't been smashing the brains out of a monster, Dave would have considered the moment to be almost romantic.

"Right," he whispered. "Full sweep of the house. Lights in every room. Let's go."

They dispatched three more creatures in the house: two upstairs and one in the basement. The rest of the house was clean and well-stocked with canned goods. There was no electricity - and therefore no central heating - but there was a well-loved fireplace and a huge stack of firewood in a box next to the door. The house was dusty, but it was neat; its occupants had either disappeared or they'd been transformed and aside from the blood stains, the house was still livable.

They'd finally found a safehouse.

**

Over the next few days, they settled into a comfortable routine. CJ took over kitchen duties almost immediately, while Kurt and Dave settled for guarding the perimeter and keeping the area clean. Brisket the dog sat at CJ's feet day and night, and although she seemed to ignore Dave and Kurt, she was a nice presence in the house.

It was almost like safety, kind of. They each had a bed, now, and some semblance of privacy. Sleeping alone felt strange to Dave now and sleeping on a bed even stranger. Without two fellow bodies next to him, the space felt huge, too big for one person.

He settled into it soon enough. Still, he could not ignore his nightmares. They were getting worse, now. In them, he was standing in what remained of his home. His parents, twisted grotesquely into spindly creatures that jerked and cracked towards him. In the dream, he was standing there completely unarmed and terrified, next to faceless strangers. The strangers were running away from him, saving themselves, and Dave was standing his ground, watching the growing army of hellish animals coming towards him. He died in this dream, every damn time, staring up at the dark sky while the creatures ripped his flesh apart, while he listened to the screams of those who had abandoned him, of those he could not save.

Now, though, the dreams were changing. The set-up was more or less the same: army of creatures, Dave alone, his comrades fleeing for their lives - Rule Three, trust no one; every man for himself - and he had nowhere to go. This time, though, someone new was there: a lithe, agile dancer's body, a silhouette in the night, standing just in front of Dave, back straight, shoulders strong, clutching a baseball bat.

"Run, Dave," the silhouette's voice commanded him, familiar and strange all at once. "Get out of here."

Dave knew he should, in the dream, knew he wanted to and knew that, if he were smart, he would; he'd say, _every man for himself, Rule Three, so long_ and be out of there faster than a bat out of hell. But he wasn't able to, he was rooted to the ground. "I'm not leaving without you," he said in the dream.

"I said, _run_."

Dave approached the silhouette, reached down and took its hand. Compared to his, it was so small, gentle, sacred almost. It felt like touching light. "You and me. I can't do this without you."

This time the silhouette looked at him. Kurt Hummel's face was looking at him, eyes bright with unshed tears.

"I'm so scared," he whispered as the creatures inched ever closer. "I don't want to die."

"Me too," Dave replied. He didn't know why he remained, why both of them remained here. Why they didn't run. Why _Dave_ didn't run. It didn't make sense to his brain, but something in him told him he was just where he needed to be, where he was supposed to be. Holding Kurt Hummel's hand while death loomed before them.

"Why aren't you leaving?" Kurt asked him, voice barely audible over the din of the creatures coming for them.

"You'd do the same for me," he said simply. "You and me, we're in this together. I won't leave you. I _can't_ leave you, because..." He let the sentence trail off there. No use stating the obvious, and Kurt already knew what Dave was willing to sacrifice to protect him, to stay together as long as they could. Dave knew that with all his heart, knew it just by looking in Kurt's eyes and seeing nothing but trust, knew it by seeing Kurt, before the face of death, and trusting him with every little bit of himself: his life, his heart, his very soul.

Kurt nodded, a small smile inching across his face even as tears began to slide down his face. "You're crying," he teased back at Dave. Then he leaned forward and kissed him.

The creatures surrounded them, and Dave clutched Kurt tighter to him - and then the dream ended.

The first time he had this dream, he'd woken up and had been unable to sleep for the rest of the night. He laid awake, staring at the ceiling and wondered if the dream was a nightmare, or a revelation.

**

The dreams only got more detailed as time went on. Perhaps it was because he was so used to staying up late now with Kurt, before the fire, trying hard to hold on to himself and instead finding himself telling Kurt things he'd never told others before.

They shared stories in these late talks, while CJ slept peacefully upstairs. They traded stories like baseball cards, each trying to one-up the other: "You think that's bad? Oh man." He told Kurt about the time an old lady had hit on him at Statton's while he cleaned up the table next to her. He told him about the class at community college where the professor was "seriously crazy," with homework that included "daydreaming" and "telling one stranger one nice thing."

Kurt told him about doing RENT, about college life. He told him about a party he went to where everyone was smashed, and going next door to the French house and seeing them playing board games innocently while next door, chaos was unleashed.

Dave learned the full story behind Rick: how he'd been in Kurt's freshman writing class, was good-looking and extraordinarily talented with his words. How he'd been so romantic, so tender and loving in the beginning. He'd given Kurt a beautiful cashmere scarf for Christmas. Kurt had gotten him a stack of expensive Moleskine notebooks. His gift felt so inadequate next to Rick's, but Rick had told him it was perfect and that he loved it.

He told him about the first time he "made love" to Rick, shortly before winter break. How amazing it felt, how in love Kurt thought he was. He'd given Rick his heart and soul.

Then second semester came, and Kurt walked in on Rick hooking up with a sophomore from the theater department in his bedroom. In the ensuing fallout, Kurt learned that, essentially the entire time he'd been with Rick, Rick had been cheating on him. That, Kurt said, just cued the beginning of everything that lead him to this point.

"But," he said, sitting in front of the fire, staring into its flames with a pensive look on his face, "I think about it now, and I think, 'If that had never happened, I wouldn't be here now. Alive. Safe.'"

"Nothing special about this place," Dave said. "Death and destruction. Why do you seem so thankful?"

Kurt turned to look at him, moved a hand to touch Dave's. "Because then I wouldn't have come home, and I wouldn't have met up with you and CJ. I think the only reason I made it this long has been because of you two."

Dave blushed, turning away. "You can hold your own just fine," he muttered.

"Yeah, but I would've gotten so lonely. And I would've died, in a swarm, and become... a creature just like everyone else." He scooted closer to Dave, just a smidge, and leaned against him gently. "Not everything has to be shit at the end of the world, you know. I'm just choosing to look at the good things that have come out of this."

Dave didn't say anything. A small part of him agreed. If this had never happened, he would never have gotten to see Kurt again, would have had to satiate his curiosity with the occasional awkward class reunions and hearsay around town, perhaps even in supermarket gossip magazines with their celebrity rumors and movie reviews. Now he was here, getting to know Kurt in a way he'd wished he'd been able to in high school. If he hadn't been so scared. Now, though, he was just happy. He was _happy_ to be here with Kurt.

When Kurt excused himself to go to bed, he leaned into Dave and whispered: "Thank you. For everything."

Dave sat in front of the fire alone for god knew how long, replaying everything in his head. He couldn't deny this any longer, couldn't deny what his heart was screaming at him: _You love him. Now kiss him. Do it before it's too late._

**

The days and nights had long since blended together. They ate when hungry, slept when tired, chopped wood when antsy. They kept watch when they felt unsafe and curled up in their separate beds at night when the house was secure. It was not about "what time of day do we do something" anymore; it was necessity, now. I have to eat, I have to sleep, I have to keep watch right now, make sure none of those things are coming.

Their scavenging missions continued, extending out into the surrounding towns. Several times they were ambushed by creatures of all shapes and sizes: creatures that flew, creatures that crawled, that glided across the floor slippery and slick as eels, that chattered their teeth as if to talk, gnashing their way towards them. Thankfully, there hadn't been any close calls up until that point. The constant threat of creatures kept the three of them on their toes, hyper-attuned and aware of every single noise. Each shuffle of their feet made the hair on the back of their necks stand alert, every whisper of cloth made their heads turn.

Up until that point, though, there hadn't been anything to worry about. Aside from the threat of being eaten and/or transformed by The Horror - which, thankfully, they hadn't encountered since Lake Forest - there hadn't been any close calls.

The woman had been hiding in a general store when they found her, huddled alone in the store room, her dirt-caked face streaked with tears. Kurt had found her first, tucked up under the Gorilla Racks, and had been so surprised that he almost shouted out loud; instead, in a loud whisper, he flagged down Dave and CJ: "Hey, guys, come here."

CJ was the first to approach her. She clutched a blood-stained pocket knife in her hand and it trembled when CJ came near. "You're not one of them, are you?" she whispered.

"No," CJ whispered back. "I'm CJ. What's your name?"

The young woman hesitated. "S-Sarah," she choked out. "I'm... from the next town over. I... I came here to look... then I hid here..."

"We're going to get you out of here, Sarah," CJ said soothingly over her babbling. She seemed not to hear him.

"...made me hide, I watched them change and they made me hide... I couldn't... I had to... It... they were just people like me, just people..."

Dave and Kurt moved forward then to help her up, slinging her arms over their shoulders. She couldn't stop talking, as if the words had been stopped up inside her for years, though it had only been a few days. Three days, by her account, though she couldn't be certain; the pitch darkness of the store room did little to help the passage of time, so she said, and she was going off the illuminated face of her Casio watch. It was probably wrong, though, everything had been acting weird, all the electronics, the radio by the cash register, everything wasn't working...

Outside they moved to get her in the truck when a low growl came sneaking out from an alleyway next to the store. Instantly Sarah froze, hard as stone, and became immobile.

"Oh god," she whispered. " _I killed him. I killed him and he's still..._ "

"We gotta move," Dave said, pushing Sarah along. She barely budged, her fear making it impossible for her to move. "Sarah, _we got to move now._ "

"With the... the knife," she said, suddenly dropping the flimsy knife to the ground. It clattered to the asphalt and skidded several feet away, dripping black blood into the storm drain. "It was his, and..."

The creature stepped out into the street then: a monstrous, bear-sized mammal. It stalked slowly out of the alley and into the dark glow of the alien sky. Its face still bore the remnants of a man's, complete with a beard and a stretched-out smile. It moved closer and closer, a lion following its prey, and moved between them and the truck.

"Fuck," Kurt and Dave said in unison. CJ said nothing, his own terror rooting him to the ground. They stood there, motionless, staring the animal down.

Later, Dave wouldn't be able to remember who moved first. All he knew was it was still one moment and absolute chaos the next. Suddenly CJ was running, shouting as he ran back to the truck: "Oh shit, they're everywhere! Oh my god!" Dave was running forward and someone was tackled by the immense weight of the creature from the alleyway. Shrieking filled the air: "Please, don't! Don't go! Please don't leave me! Help me! Oh god, oh god, help me!"

He turned around and watched the creature tear into Sarah's throat. He made a move to run t her but stopped, acknowledging the futility of the situation. Sarah was gone. She let out a final scream, ending in a wet gurgle, and bled scarlet into the gutters. Only three minutes out of the safety of the general store and she was dead. The world was getting all the more dangerous.

Dave would've stood there and watched that creature eat her if Kurt hadn't grabbed his arm and yanked hard, pulling Dave towards the truck with surprising strength. It was only when they were driving through the approaching group of creatures moving to feast on Sarah's body that Dave realized he was clutching something in his hand: a bracelet torn from the girl's wrist, the beads reading: WORLD'S BEST SISTER.

**

That night, Dave sat on the roof of the house, perched carefully on the gable, watching the landscape and trying to block out the thoughts swirling around in his head. It was still out there, and Dave didn't need to keep watch so vigilantly, but everyone else was sleeping. He couldn't sleep anymore, not with the dreams, not with the thoughts in his head.

He knew he should leave. He was getting emotionally attached, to CJ, to Kurt. He was having _dreams_ about Kurt now, weird dreams, dreams he _liked_ and yet was terrified of, dreams where _they kissed_ and Dave said those three words he'd always been a little intimidated by; this could only spell bad news. He should run, run before he did something fucking stupid, like risking his life for them, like dying for them. If he wanted to survive, he would leave. Simple as that.

Only it wasn't as simple as that. Not anymore, it wasn't.

Those feelings for Kurt, they'd never left. He knew that. Had known it from the moment they met up. And now, with all these weeks having passed... he thought of Kurt's smile, of his laughter when CJ cracked a joke, the stories he told Dave when they sat, alone and sleepless, in front of the camping lanterns for hours. He thought of the long, comfortable silences they'd sit in when they didn't want to talk; the way Kurt, little by little, showed bits of vulnerability. The way Dave was letting his own facade crack - dangerous, but inevitable. He had to stop. He had to stop before he endangered himself - or the group. And after today, the terror with Sarah, the close call they'd all had... Now he was at a crossroads, trying to fight himself, stop himself from caring, from loving the two who had saved his life countless times, whose lives he had saved despite all those stupid rules.

How long would this continue? How long would any of them be alive? Nothing was permanent here. Tomorrow, he could wind up like Sarah, and he would die full of regrets. He would die knowing that he had never truly lived, had merely survived, and that is not much of a life at all. He would die knowing that Kurt would never know how he really felt, he would die without ever having told him that maybe, one day, they could have this. They could have everything, even when it seemed like they had nothing.

The bracelet had been tucked into his pocket and he pulled it out now, looking at the beads. This scrap of humanity, yanked from the wrist of a girl he didn't even have to save. He was filled with a strange, aching sadness, a yearning he tried to push down in him. He hadn't even known he'd wanted to save the girl, to bring her back, to have another member of the party, until he'd looked at that bracelet and realized she had been someone's sister, daughter, friend.

That empathy was what could get him killed. He knew it, knew he should detach himself from it, detach himself from the emotional connection he shared with Kurt and CJ. Empathy was the root of hope and hope got people killed. If he let himself care any more than he already did, then all of the effort, the preparation, would be for naught. It would be his downfall and he knew it all too well. He couldn't just shove this "crush" under the rug. It was a huge elephant in the room, stepping on toes, making too much noise so that he couldn't sleep at night. He was in too deep.

So why wasn't he running?

The sky was illuminated with that same unearthly glow, a pathetic imitation of the moon. Dave missed the moon. He missed the stars, the clouds, the rain, the snow... but most of all, he missed the sun. He closed his eyes, inhaled the frigid air deeply, and tried to remember what sunshine felt like, warm and comforting as it bathed him in its glow. He tried to recall the smell of the fake football turf, the leathery smell of the football as it passed into his hands, the feel of a jersey and shoulder pads resting on his body, protecting him. Try as he might, he could not fully bring these simple things into his memory. He knew they were there - familiar, safe reminders of life before the apocalypse - and if he tried hard enough, he could just barely brush against them. Still, they would not come, lingering on the edge of his mind like a fading scent. He kept his eyes closed, firmly grasping the few strands of happy memories that he could reach.

He heard someone climb up next to him. He knew who it was, that presence instantly warming him. His heart pounded in his chest.

"You going to sleep out here?" Kurt asked, voice soft and quiet. He must be close, his breath ghosting across Dave's cheek ever-so-slightly.

Dave's eyes remained firmly closed. "I can't remember sunlight," he said. The strange tone of his voice confused him. Under the seemingly emotionless statement was a hint of longing, a mournful song trying to escape.

Kurt sighed and leaned a little closer, shivering in the cold. "Neither can I," he replied. "I can't remember sunlight, or the sound of my Dad's voice, or the smell of our garage. I can't remember how it felt before, when I didn't have to sleep with a weapon next to my bed."

Dave chuckled and finally opened his eyes, staring out at the expanse surrounding them. "I used to do that anyway," he laughed.

Kurt puffed out a laugh as well. "Of course you did, Mr. Apocalypse."

"Saved my life, didn't it?"

"True."

"It... would've saved theirs, too." Suddenly he was overwhelmed with emotion. All the people he hadn't been able to save: his parents, his friends... everyone, gone. "I wish they'd believed me. That they'd _all_ believed me." The lump in his throat swelled to the size of a fist now. He tried to swallow it down but it stuck there, clamping around his vocal cords. It hurt now to speak.

"Dave..." Kurt said gently.

"Is CJ inside?" he asked, abruptly changing the subject. "Man, I envy that asshole - "

"Dave," Kurt said again. His voice was open, warm, like a pair of arms outstretched and waiting to receive him. To help him. God, Dave wanted to accept the offer, but he couldn't. If he did, it would be the end of it all, the end of every single thing he'd ever known, had ever prepared for. If he let his guard down now, it would be the last thing he ever did.

"I don't get how he can sleep so heavily in a place like this, it's weird, I haven't slept properly in months, I'm so jealous - " he babbled, trying to steer away from this dangerous area, this foreign territory.

"David." There it was, the punctuation, the finality, the demand: you will let me in, you will let me help you, _please let me help you._ "It's okay, you know." Dave didn't say anything now, clutching the last shred of the old world, the old rules. "You can cry. You can scream. You don't have to... to fake it for our sakes."

"I'm _not_ ," he said. "I just. I can't, Kurt. I _can't_. I have to be this way, to survive. To _stay alive._ To save myself, to save... to save..." Now. It was happening _now._ "To save _you._ If I let my guard down, even for a minute, if I - "

" _It's me,_ " Kurt murmured, so close to Dave now, and that was it. That was all it took. Dave couldn't stop the tears coming even if he wanted to. Before he registered what was happening, he was sobbing, sucking in great breaths of air like he was drowning. He cried like he was five years old and lost in the grocery store again, the first time he thought the world had ended. He shook uncontrollably, finally letting go. The wall was down now, he had fucked this all up, broken every single god damn rule, and he... didn't even care anymore.

Kurt's arms wrapped around him, tight and secure. The other boy buried his face in Dave's hair, saying nothing, humming a soothing tune. It sounded vaguely familiar to Dave, perhaps an old jazz song; a tune he'd heard the glee club sing, so long ago. Kurt hummed, the melody like a lullaby, and held him tight enough to say with his body what he couldn't say with words: _I'll never let you go._


	4. Chapter 4

At least a week passed between the strange roof conversation and It. In that week, there was something electric between them. They skirted around each other in the house, and yet were magnetized, brought together by some strange force. Suddenly it was a battle to stay close and to run far away, to touch and to recoil. It felt like Dave was warring with two sides of himself: a side that said, _You'll die if you do this, run you shit._ The other side begged him, _Don't leave them. Don't leave him. Keep them safe. Keep him safe._

He had taken to lying awake when he should have been sleeping, listening to the house creak and moan. Somehow, he knew that Kurt wasn't sleeping much either, next door in his own bed, blinking into the darkness.

It happened after Dave chopped firewood. He'd gone back inside to find Kurt in the middle of the room, surrounded by thin cardboard record sleeves. Next to him, a red and white suitcase sat, unassuming and plain. Everything was illuminated by the firelight, flickering across the floor, shadowing Kurt's face. For a moment, Dave thought he was crying, but when Kurt looked up, the excitement in his eyes was evident.

"I found it in the basement," he said, gesturing to the suitcase. "And all of these!"

Dave put the firewood in the box next to the door, satisfied with their supply. "A suitcase," he stated, coming closer, standing on the fringe of Kurt's record-circle.

"Not _just_ a suitcase!" Kurt said, lifting up a section of the suitcase, exposing a small record player. "It's a portable phonograph!"

"Oh," Dave replied lamely. He knelt down, looking at the record sleeves. He recognized some of the names: Etta James, Ben E. King, Glenn Miller, Buddy Holly; old greats of the golden age of blues and rock 'n' roll.

"Do you recognize any of them?" Kurt asked. He sounded closer than he had been only a few moments ago, though he didn't seem to acknowledge that he was sitting closer. That magnetism again, pulling them towards each other, gravitating to the center. Dave could almost smell Kurt's shampoo, the same generic crap they'd been taking from pharmacies, and yet something distinctly different, distinctly Kurt. For a moment he felt dazed, punch drunk with the proximity. As soon as the moment came, though, he shook it off, didn't allow his heart to beat wildly like a wild horse set free. Instead he shook his head.

"I don't, no," he said. "I mean, I recognize some of the names." He grabbed the Buddy Holly record, turning it in the light. "I know Buddy Holly-"

Kurt snatched the record from Dave's hand and crawled back to the player. Gently, he lowered the record over the turntable, flicked it on and then positioned the arm carefully over the record. It settled down, the telltale crackle-shhh of old recordings cutting the silence. Then the guitars cut in, followed by a voice: _Maybe baby, I'll have you; Maybe baby, you'll be true; Maybe baby, I'll have you for me._ The room seemed to brighten with the music, the firelight suddenly becoming much more comforting.

Kurt stood and began to dance. The room lit up, Kurt a beacon of hope emerging in the dark. He was amazing, standing in the darkness and radiating warmth and light and love; everything Dave had thought he'd lost, suddenly found in a body that danced freely. He danced like he had nothing to worry about, a smile setting his face aglow. He looked at Dave with twinkling eyes, holding out a hand.

"Dance with me," he said softly, swiveling his hips gently and one-two stepping in little circles. He voiced it around a laugh, joy bubbling out of him.

It was infectious but Dave shook his head. "I can't," he said, even as his own smile crept upon his face.

Kurt grabbed his hand anyway, hauled him up. "Liar," he said. "I saw you do Thriller, you're a natural." He pressed closer, so Dave could feel the heat of him. "Just let go," he breathed, his voice barely audible over Buddy Holly's own crooning. _Maybe baby, you will love me someday._

So close, so close... Dave didn't have control of his hands. They hovered over Kurt's hips, then rested there, up against the denim of Kurt's tattered, dirty jeans. He began to sway with him; for several seconds they stayed this way, so close so close, then Kurt was sashaying away again, dragging Dave with him. This time Dave let himself be pulled along. He closed his own eyes.

Everything was disappearing. The anxiety, the constant fear, the rage and the unbearable sadness; all of it, slipping away in front of his eyes like a melting candle. It melted away and behind the wall, a dancing silhouette beckoned him closer. He let the music flow into him, illuminating the world around him. He moved into that silhouette, let it hold him, take hold of him.

He didn't realize he'd danced for so long, but the song ended as quick as it had began. Dave opened his eyes to look into Kurt's. The other boy was beaming.

"Yeah," he said, his voice bright and soft. "Yeah, just like that..."

"I..." Dave could hear the record spinning. "Another?" he asked.

"Don't have to tell me twice," Kurt replied, hurrying over to the player once again. He plucked one from the scattered pile. When he returned, Sam Cooke began to sing: _Darling you send me, I know you send me, darling, you send me, honest, you do._

He came up close to Dave and that was it. Their fates were sealed when Kurt moved slow and careful near to him. Dave let himself dance, let himself hold Kurt as they moved, lost himself in the music. Between record changes, Kurt laughed and hummed to himself and Dave felt something akin to joy swelling inside his chest, a gold balloon ready to burst. His thoughts became colors and sounds, became images of Kurt and Kurt alone, swirling together abstractly; It had rendered him absolutely speechless. He felt safe for the first time in months.

The songs gradually began to get slower, winding the party down. Dave found himself cradling Kurt while Otis Redding filtered out of the little red and white suitcase: _These arms of mine, they are burning, burning from wanting you. These arms of mine..._ They moved in tandem, wrapped around each other. Kurt's hands, secure and solid - safe - against the back of Dave's neck, sure and strong. Dave's arms circled around Kurt, holding him impossibly close, and he couldn't take his eyes off Kurt for even a second. They looked at each other, reading each other like open books.

_You're safe with me. I'll never let you go. I will keep you safe, or I will die trying._

He knew then and there that, despite all those stupid fucking rules, there wasn't a thing he wouldn't do for Kurt. Not a Goddamn thing he wouldn't do. He would throw his life down, would gladly let all those monsters eat him right down to the bones, if it meant Kurt remained unharmed. Everything clicked just then: the dream, the magnets that pulled them together, the ropes that bound them together. Dave found his raison d'etre in the apocalypse, and isn't that just how it goes? You find happiness as the world is ending. And yet, it was just as it should have been, this lighthouse of safety illuminating the world around him. Bathed in its light, nothing could touch him.

Dave knew then that he had loved Kurt from the second they'd met, all those years ago, had loved him and hadn't even known it. He'd been too young, too scared, too naïve to know that what he'd thought was hatred, jealousy, anger had been love the whole time. He could see in Kurt's face that he was thinking the same thing: that they hadn't known, back then, that this would be their perfection, would have laughed at it, and yet here they were, together. Fate had done everything, and everything culminated in that moment, swaying in the firelight to old jazz records while outside the world burned to the ground.

Dave couldn't stop it. "I love you," he breathed. Saying it was freedom. Everything suddenly made perfect sense.

Kurt smiled that smile and pressed his lips to Dave's cheek, whispering back: "I love you, too."

It felt like the single most natural thing to kiss him then. Dave threw caution to the wind and he did as his heart wanted. Nothing had ever felt so right. All the puzzle pieces fell into place; the desolate hole inside him suddenly filled with life, a garden in full bloom. All because of this boy in his arms, who was kissing him back like he'd been waiting for it his whole life. And he had. They both had.

When they broke apart, Kurt paused, then moved back to the records. He picked one, removing the spinning Otis Redding album and exchanging them. Dave didn't get a chance to see the sleeve. For a moment, silence; then the whine of violins. _This magic moment, so different and so new, was like any other, until I kiss you._ He stood, turned around. They faced each other, saying nothing. _Sweeter than wine, softer than the summer night, everything I want, I have whenever I hold you tight._

"Wanna hear a secret?" Kurt murmured, coming closer. Instinctively, Dave rested his hands against Kurt's hips, pulling him in. "I always had a thing for chubby boys who sweat too much..."

"...and are going to be bald by the time they're thirty?" Dave replied. Even though it stung just a little to remember that day, the first time everything changed, he couldn't help himself from smiling.

"What can I say," Kurt said with a casual shrug. "I dig jocks." He laughed then, his hand moving to Dave's cheek.

"I've always loved you," Dave said quietly. "Even when I thought I hated you."

"I know," came the reply, those fingers stroking gently along his face.

"I'm so sorry," he continued, dropping his head onto Kurt's shoulder, pressing his face against his neck. "Everything I did then. I'm so fucking sorry. I was... I was..."

Kurt hugged him back. "I know," he said. "But you know what? That was then, and this is now, and I forgive you. Okay?"

Dave pulled away, searching Kurt's eyes. "When?"

"When what?"

"When did you forgive me?"

Kurt thought about it for a moment. "Honestly? I don't remember. I just remember one day I went to bed furious at you, and the next I woke up and all I wanted was to hug you and tell you it'd be okay." He shrugged. "I never hated you, Dave, you have to understand. At worst, I pitied you, but I never hated you. Ever."

Dave let out a long sigh. "I hated you, I really did. Or, at least, I thought I did." One hand moved from Kurt's hip to take his hand, holding it gently, as if Kurt might break away, fade into smoke, a hallucination conjured by Dave's wounded, lonely spirit. "I hated that you were happy and I wasn't, that you were surrounded by love and acceptance and I was surrounded by fear and anger all the time. I hated that I wanted you. I hated that I wasn't you." He smiled wistfully, remembering that time. It seemed so long ago, decades ago, in a world that had ceased to be, a plane of existence that he could no longer see. "I hated everything about you because everything you had was everything I wanted. You were so happy, and I was so sad, and I just..."

"...wanted to bring me down a peg?" Kurt supplied, ducking his head to look into Dave's eyes.

"Something like that, yeah," he replied. "I just wanted you to suffer as much as I was, so I wouldn't be alone... but that just made me even more alone." He shook his head, squinched his eyes shut, as if embarrassed. "God, I was such a fucking moron. How did I ever think that was a good idea?"

"It doesn't matter," Kurt murmured. "Not now, it doesn't." He squeezed Dave's hand. It was solid and warm, firm and strong; Kurt was not delicate, would not break or disappear into the ether; he was as real as Dave, just as present. "What matters now is that I am here, that you are here, that we're alive and we've done that because we had each other. To be frank, although I forgave you, I didn't trust you when we met up. And I know you didn't trust me either. And now look where we are."

They stood for a moment, wrapped around each other.

"When did you realize you loved me?" Dave whispered, voice trembling with insecurity.

"When we were on the roof, after Sarah," he replied, quick as a flash. "I could see right through you, I knew you were just barely keeping yourself together and all I wanted was to just... take that away. Make everything go away. You were the only one who had remained so closed off. You never let yourself just... grieve. On the roof I realized how badly it hurt you, how this will to survive overwhelmed your need to be human for a moment. All I could think was that if I held you, it'd go away. And when I had you in my arms, when I realized that you trusted me, that's when I realized. I would've done anything for you then, just to stop you from feeling all of that pain." A beat. "Cheesy, I know, but true."

Dave hugged Kurt tightly to him, bending down to kiss him hard. Tension drained out of his entire body, fell off him, all his armor fell down, exposing him, bare and vulnerable. He'd never felt so raw and open, letting someone in like this, and there was a fear attached to it. At the same time, there was a sense of relief like cold water washing over him. He waited for the nausea to come, the sick realization that he had doomed himself to horrible fate by letting himself get so close, but it never did. Just a twinge of fear, fear of the unknown. He kissed Kurt long and deep, trying to tell him all of this. Trying to tell him this was all new and he was scared but he was ready, that he needed this.

When they parted, Kurt asked: "Will you let me protect you too?"

"Yes," Dave breathed, moving in for another kiss. "Please. Protect me."

**

The bedroom was not exactly the nicest one they could've chosen, but it was far enough from CJ's room that he wouldn't hear anything traumatic. It was a large bedroom on the opposite end of the house, with a double bed and a dresser. That was all. It was dusty, it was dark, it was cold, but Dave wasn't focusing on that at all.

It seemed like the next logical step after admitting everything, after dancing and kissing and hugging in that dusty, dark living room. Now they stood, afraid but excited, not sure what to do next.

Dave moved first. He had been holding back for so long, denying himself the things that would make him happy, and now everything he'd ever wanted was before him, open and waiting for him. He made the first touch, the first alien contact, touching gentle fingertips against Kurt's chest. He could feel Kurt's heart galloping under the fabric of his thin cotton shirt, and it made Dave relax, knowing Kurt was just as nervous as he was. He smoothed his hand down, sliding it over Kurt's shoulder, feeling the warmth of his skin through the shirt, subtle as a sunbath.

His hand trailed down. Kurt's stomach jumped reflexively when Dave brushed that tender spot just beside his belly button. Dave quirked a quick smile before taking the hem of Kurt's shirt and guiding it up. When the shirt was discarded, Dave immediately moved his hands back to Kurt's torso. His skin was soft as silk and so warm. He reminded Dave of an electric blanket he'd had when he was younger, the comfort of it got him through the night. He always felt safe under the cover of that blanket, untouchable, invincible; now he felt the same way in front of Kurt.

"No fair," Kurt hummed. He gently moved Dave's hands away, reaching for Dave's own shirt.

When it was off, Dave felt a sudden rush of insecurity. He always felt so large, so ugly next to Kurt. It was like Beauty and the Beast.

Something must have shown in his face because Kurt pressed a kiss to his neck and then his cheek before whispering in his ear, "Don't be shy."

"I'm not shy," Dave whispered back, dipping his fingers under the waistband of Kurt's jeans, hooking his boxers with his thumbs. The other boy hitched in a breath and Dave began to pull them down.

"You're too slow," Kurt said, pushing forward. Dave stopped him.

"I don't want this to be over too fast," he said. There was something in his voice that made them both pause; a desolateness. What was unsaid hung between them like fog: _I want this to last forever, in case we never get this again._ Kurt slid his hands around Dave's neck, hooking them together. They rested against the nape of his neck, and Kurt leaned up and kissed him softly, barely a touch at all.

"Of course," he said.

Slowly he slid Kurt's jeans down. He stepped out of them, leaving them in a puddle on the floor, and Dave took a moment to appreciate the moment. He remembered being in high school, sexually frustrated and so angry, standing in his shower at three in the morning with his hand on his dick, thinking about Kurt Hummel: how he'd look without all those ridiculous clothes; how he'd moan when Dave touched him; what his face would look like when he came. All these things he'd only pictured and now it was hitting him, staring at Kurt's naked body: the moment had finally arrived.

Dave opened his mouth to say that and Kurt put his hand right over Dave's lips. "Nope," he said. "Don't you dare. That was then, this is now."

Dave rolled his eyes, then pressed a soft kiss to Kurt's palm. Then he nodded once, to show he understood. Kurt pulled his hand away and went for Dave's belt. The sound of metal hitting metal, the slide of leather as it came out of his belt loops, when straight down his body; the feeling of excitement suddenly grew tenfold. His pants suddenly felt way too tight.

Then they were both naked. Gloriously naked, standing in the middle of the bedroom just looking at each other. If Dave hadn't been so nervous, he would've laughed at the scene: two boys, naked, ready, and standing there doing nothing. Dave didn't know what to do. He'd never done this with a guy before; hell, he'd barely done it with a girl, and he hadn't exactly enjoyed it much. Sex for him always felt a bit like a chore, something he did only to please the other person and never himself. Now, he felt genuine attraction. He wanted to do this, more than anything.

"Have you...?" Kurt asked, trailing the question off. _Have you ever done this before? With a guy?_

"No," he said. His voice quaked. "Have you?"

What a dumb fucking question. Of course Kurt had. The other boy nodded once. "But only, you know, with... with Rick," he replied, his voice steadier than Dave's but sounding just as nervous. "No one else. Just... just the one."

"Okay," Dave replied. He moved closer to Kurt. "Maybe we shouldn't...?"

"Stop talking," Kurt said, leaping at Dave. Dave caught him without really thinking about it, lifting him off the floor. Their mouths met again, this time more frantic. Dave set Kurt down, refusing to break the kiss, and walked them towards the bed. They collapsed onto it, all hands, teeth, and tongues. They breathed each other in, sliding together, fitting perfectly against each other; the joining sides of a broken heart.

**

Dave woke up with a pleasant smoke in his head. It took him a moment to register the body next to him, the body he was currently holding to his chest like a stuffed animal. Kurt's head rested on his shoulder, face turned to Dave's chest. One arm was draped over Dave's waist; the other behind him, their fingers just touching. Their legs were a tangled mess. They were wrapped around each other, the hold tight and secure.

He felt a strange thing blooming in his chest. It took him longer than it should have to realize: it was _happiness._ What a strange feeling. He'd forgotten it, lost in the jumble of confused and scared emotions he'd felt, lost when he'd tried not to feel anything at all. And now here it was.

Thanks to Kurt, Dave remembered what it was to finally, _finally_ , be happy, to finally have everything you ever dreamed of, to be sated heart, body, and soul. Finally, there was a ship in the ocean, carrying him to safety, weathering the storms with tenacity and determination. That ship was Kurt, bringing him back to shore, back to earth, where _humans_ lived.

He couldn't help it. Even though Kurt was asleep, he had to. He leaned forward and kissed him slowly, smiling when Kurt kissed back with a sleepy groan. When they parted, Kurt grimaced. "Morning breath," he rasped, sticking out his tongue.

"Well, good morning to you too, sunshine," Dave said, smiling.

"I am not a morning person," Kurt whined, pulling the blanket higher over them. "Go back to sleep, you big lug. Just one more hour."

Dave chuckled. "I'll go make breakfast, then. You keep sleeping, baby."

"If there's no coffee, I'll be sad," came the muffled reply from under the blankets. Dave laughed again, quieter this time, as he stepped into the hall.

He felt like he was floating. Everything had changed again in the span of just a few hours. The world didn't feel as bleak and desolate as it had just a few days ago. Now, Dave wandered through the living room with its portable phonograph and the haphazard stack of old records, through the dusty, cold dining room they never used, right into the kitchen--

CJ sat at the table, the cereal spoon halfway to his mouth. It was written all over his face: he knew already.

"Hey," he said, awkwardly.

Dave walked into the kitchen. "Hey," he parroted, searching the cabinets for breakfast. He got the instant coffee out of the cabinet, packets of instant oatmeal, skirting around CJ hesitantly. The silence in the kitchen was heavy and awkward. He wasn't sure what to say: _Hey, CJ, me and Kurt are fucking now, thought you should know._ _Hey, CJ, guess what, I'm in love. Hey, CJ, keep your door closed tonight, and every night after._ He wouldn't keep this from CJ, but he wasn't sure how to broach the topic without turning the conversation sour.

CJ did it for him: "So, I was right," he said, munching away on his cereal like they were merely discussing trivial things, not a potential bombshell.

Dave put a pot of water on the gas stove and turned it on. "Right about what?"

"You _do_ have a crush on Kurt," CJ smirked.

Dave laughed then, the awkwardness dissipating. "Yeah, you were right about that one," he confirmed. "I guess I wasn't too subtle about it, was I?"

"Look," CJ said, the tone in his voice changing. It was still airy, still conversational, but it was sincere. Dave turned to look at him fully. "I just want you to know, I don't care, and I still have your guys' backs. I don't have a problem with any of this, just... um, could you keep it down next time?"

Dave's eyes widened. "Shit, I am _so_ sorry," he said, the blush rising to his cheeks. "Were we really that loud?"

CJ exploded in a fit laughter. "Oh man, you should see the look on your face," he laughed. "You look cute when you're embarrassed, I can see why Kurt liked you so much."

"Dick, don't do that," Dave replied, annoyed, before the second part of CJ's sentence hit him. "Wait, what? Why he liked me? What does that mean?"

CJ looked at him, eyebrows raised. "You either really are oblivious, or you are in denial. You couldn't see the way he looks at you before?"

"Uh," Dave tried.

"That time in the field? When you thought I was sleeping? He ran out before I could even grab my crowbar. He was terrified. I've never seen him look so scared."

"I don't understand what you're telling me," Dave said slowly.

"Boy's cared about you for almost as long as we've been a team," he said. "And also, this past week has been super awkward because of all the unresolved sexual tension, so thank you for fixing that. I was about to go nuts and just lock you guys in a room and let you, uh, _have at it_."

Dave laughed then, couldn't stop. He sat down and laughed at the situation, at everything, how stupid he'd been at the start. How stupid and self-centered, how logical and troubled and sad and angry, and how, now, things felt like they were _finally_ starting to go right, things were _finally_ going to get better. Now he had hope, and it felt good. It felt _great_.

He set three bowls for oatmeal on the table when he finished laughing. When Kurt came down, they ate in companionable, understanding silence; a makeshift little family of friends, leaning on each other in the storm, with a sleeping little dog at their feet.


	5. Chapter 5

Word was that CJ had spotted survivors in a general store an hour's drive outside of town. Somehow, he'd gone that far on one of his walks with Brisket and saw movement in a store that had been too slow to be anything but human. They'd gotten into the truck to drive out there to investigate.

In front of the general store, a battered sedan, blood-stained around the wheel wells, signaled that, at some point, humans had been there. They had parked outside of the town, where the engine noise wouldn't attract monsters or advertise their arrival to the potentially dangerous survivors in the store. Dave's horror tropes had taught him to trust no one, assume all other survivors are dangerous, and so he cautiously lead them around to the front of the general store to peer in the windows.

Dave couldn't see much through the grimy windows. There were no signs of obvious movement, so Dave quietly pushed the door open to reveal the aftermath of some horrible attack. He gagged, standing in the doorway, at the sight of all the blood, the viscera, the brain matter heaped in gray clumps across the floor, the shattered bones picked clean of flesh and snapped in two. There was a dark bump at the far end of the store that looked suspiciously like a human head, but he wasn't going to get close enough to find out. Dave looked down at his feet. A single finger, with a modest diamond ring still attached. Shit. Human remains, all over the store, complete carnage. He hadn't seen anything so bad since Lake Forest, where that thing snacked on the bodies of the recently deceased and made them into one of them.

“Oh Jesus,” CJ said behind him. “Shit, man, shit. Shit. I swear, I swear, yesterday, they were in here, they were fine.” Kurt didn't say a word but Dave could hear him swallowing hard, suppressing his own urge to vomit. The room smelled like death, the copper metal scent of blood, the smell of sweat and something unrecognizable, pungent and sour; it burned through him as if on fire.

Dave's pulse quickened, adrenaline suddenly filling his veins with ice. “This blood is recent,” he said. The obvious statement grounded them all. The truth was an entity around them now. The blood was fresh, which meant unspeakable danger was very, very close. Tracked through the blood were strange, long prints, like something had dragged itself out of the back of the store. There were several tracks, all of them convening around the back door. He felt a sick feeling spike through him at the realization of what he was seeing: that something had dragged those bodies outside, and something was definitely still nearby.

“We have to get the fuck out of here,” he said, backing up slowly. “We gotta go, _we gotta go now._ ”

He turned around. They headed out into the street, moving quiet but fast. They had barely gone one block before they heard it: a screaming whine that pierced the silent air like a pin popping a balloon. It was loud and close, as if in their ears, and so high and violent that it buckled Dave's knees. Behind him, CJ fell to his knees.

“Oh god,” Kurt said, his voice soft and filled with terror. “Oh god, they've...”

Further down the street, Dave could see them, coming from all directions. They crawled, walked, slithered, crept towards them at an agonizingly slow pace. _Playing with their food,_ Dave knew. Teasing them with impending death.

How many of these things had once been people?

Dave hauled CJ to his feet and they stood close together. The creatures came closer now. Dave opened his mouth to try to plan an escape, but he never got that far. There was the sound of raspy breathing, heavy, jiggling as if in laughter.

“This is it, I'm going to die,” CJ said in a choked whisper. Dave turned around.

The Horror towered over them, several times larger than it had been in Lake Forest. Its squirrel-like flaps expanded fully, at least two meters long by now, and its mouth, ringed in blood and flesh, twisted up in a sadistic smile.

He rested a hand on the gun. The Horror opened its gaping mouth, revealing a long, snake-like tongue and sharp dinosaur teeth. It smelled like decay, rotting flesh. Its breath was hot in his face, panting like a dog in its excitement.

Around them, the creatures came closer. All kinds: the spiny dogs, the round-headed crab-walking creatures he'd encountered in that convenience store back in Lima, the slim athletic form of the creature that Kurt had saved him from...

Kurt.

He looked back. Kurt was white as a sheet, staring with alert, horrified eyes at The Horror before them. CJ kept up a stream of whispered prayers, his knuckles white with effort as they gripped his weapon tight.

“Ready?” Dave whispered. Kurt gave a slight nod. CJ paused in his prayers, a silent affirmative signal. “On three, _run._ Run and _hide._ One. Two. _Three!_ ”

They bolted, each one of them running in a different direction. Dave wished he knew where Kurt would be hiding, if he would be safe; where CJ would duck into to gather himself up and prepare to escape the situation. He wondered if they were together or if they were alone, every man for himself. Dave ran, circling around the general store. The Horror didn't chase him, like he'd thought it would. Instead it rose into the sky and let out a shriek. The creatures responded in turn, the air turning cacophonous with the roars and screams of the creatures as they came cascading towards them from every direction. Dave watched them come near him; he pulled the gun and fired at the closest ones, dropping them like flies, but his bullets were in limited supply.

The alley behind the general store was narrow. This was a good place to run into but not a safe place at all. It would bottle neck almost instantly with the crowd of things coming to kill him. He needed to get out, preferably sooner rather than later.

He backed up against the cyclone fence. The next creature paced toward him, stretching its limbs long and smooth like a cat as it stalked forward. It padded gracefully towards him, all wide predatory eyes and open, waiting stomach. It stopped several feet in front of him, staring him down. Its eyes were bright and curious, _intelligent_ even. He searched its face for any remnants of humanity but couldn't find any immediately discernible features.

Dave turned and scrambled up the fence just as the creature lunged. It tore at his leg. Pain verbed through it and straight up through his body. He let out a cry of pain as he toppled over the fence, falling to the ground hard. For a moment he lay there, stunned, his leg throbbing, before he regained his senses and stood up as quickly as he could. The creature was following him, climbing over the fence behind him. Its claws were caught in the holes of the fence and it let out a frustrated scream. Dave turned and ran as fast as his injured leg would allow him.

The sound of galloping behind him told him there was a stampede coming towards him. He ran back around the front of the general store and across the street. The numbers were slightly thinner over here. Above them, The Horror kept shrieking like a horrid bird. It seemed to be calling all the creatures from all over; Dave knew only the ones in the vicinity could hear the cry, but it was enough to bring a swarm of them. The entire town would be flooded with them in no time at all.

He had to get out of here.

He knew he should run. He had the opportunity now to make it to the truck if he ran hard and fast enough. There was a lull in the number of creatures coming from that direction. He could easily dodge a few fast ones, throw a few well-placed jabs with the knife he kept holstered to his belt, make it to the truck and drive away. He would be safe. He knew that that plan was his best bet, was a sure way to survive. He knew he should, and some distant part of him screamed at him: _RUN! RUN YOU FUCKING MORON! LEAVE THEM! RUN! DO YOU WANT TO DIE?_

“No!” he said to himself, pushing the sound out of him like he'd been punched in the gut.

_THEN LEAVE! THEN FUCKING GET OUT OF HERE! DRIVE AND DON'T LOOK BACK._

A human noise floated out from a neighboring building, a noise of effort. An animal cry of pain. He thought of CJ and Kurt, torn apart by these creatures, while he sat at the farmhouse with Brisket, alive... alive and... what? What purpose did he have to survive for if it meant he survived without the two he'd grown to know and love so much? No, he would not abandon them, he refused to let them die alone. If they were going to die, they were going to die as a team. All for one, one for all.

He shot out into the street again, swinging the knife as he did. The knife struck a ring of creatures, each of which let out howls of pain. They hadn't closed in yet, there was still time for them all to get out now.

“Dave!” came a shout. He turned. A door opened, and Kurt's head poked out. “Here! In here!”

He ran for the door, diving through it. They chased him. CJ and Kurt slammed their bodies against the door, against the rushing tide. Dave pushed a heavy bureau in front of the door as a temporary barricade. The creatures banged against it, shouting, and the doors opened ever so slightly. They drummed against the desk in a staccato beat.

“That won't hold for long,” Dave said, turning to look at the other two. “We gotta do something and we gotta do it _fast._ ”

“We could make a break for it,” CJ suggested. “Find a back door, a back window, and just bolt. Fuck the truck, we'll just run.”

“No,” Dave said. “For one, we'll never survive if we're running. Maybe if it was just one of us, but not all three. We need that truck. It's the only thing that can really outrun those things. We have no chance of beating them on foot.”

“Well, they seem to follow movement, don't they?” Kurt said. “And that... The Horror. They follow that, too.”

“We need a distraction,” Dave said.

And then, with perfect clarity, it hit him. The perfect plan. What he had to do. Oh god, it was stupid. It was the stupidest thing he'd ever do; he probably wouldn't survive if they did it. And yet.

And yet.

Kurt looked over at Dave, searched his face, and instantly knew what he was thinking. His face twisted, angry and scared all at once.

“Don't you fucking dare, David,” he said in a low, threatening voice. “ _Don't you even think about it._ ”

“Do what?” CJ asked. It dawned on him a second later. He blinked in surprise, shook his head. “No, no, dude, you _can't_ be serious...”

“It's the only way,” Dave said. “If I can lure them away from the door, you guys can make a dash for the truck and swing back to pick me up.”

“No,” Kurt said, voice hard. “It's too risky. We will find another way.”

As if on cue, the sound of splintering wood cut through the building. The door wouldn't hold.

“There is no other way,” Dave argued. “This is what we have to do.”

“You _can't_ ,” Kurt cried, desperation filling is voice. “You'll die!”

He thought of CJ, who had saved his ass so many times; who had been the first person to see through his mask, who laughed at bad jokes and slept like a log in the heart of danger. CJ, whose little sister had been torn to bits in the living room and he had had the presence of mind to grab a denim jacket as he'd bolted.

Dave looked at Kurt. The other boy's eyes were filling with tears, the terror, the desperation, the love. Dave could read it all like an open book. He remembered his dream, the one where Kurt stood, valiant and protective, even when he was scared. Kurt, who had saved him from so many monsters, Kurt who had changed his life, Kurt whom he'd loved for what felt like his whole life, who made him remember what happiness was. Kurt, who had made the apocalypse go from dark to light, had restored hope, had restored something in Dave that he thought had long since died. Kurt was a source of infinite light, full of life. Dave didn't care anymore about surviving on his own; now, he only wanted Kurt's safety, would do anything, _anything_ , to save that light from going out.

“I won't,” he said, smiling. “I promise, I won't.”

“Please,” Kurt begged. “There has to be another way.”

Dave touched his hands to Kurt's face. There were the tears then, spilling over his hands, warm rivulets running down his wrists. He leaned forward to kiss them.

“I love you,” he said. That was all he could think to explain the rationale of his plan. He knew it was the stupidest fucking thing he'd ever done, possibly the last stupid thing he'd ever do in this waking life. He'd had all those rules in place, had spent so many years of his life preparing for the apocalypse. What he hadn't prepared for was Kurt Hummel, and now that this was happening, all those rules suddenly didn't matter. There was only one rule left to follow, a new one: _All for one, one for all._ Ringing in his head, like a bell, clear as crystal, loud as a siren.

“You're a fucking moron,” Kurt replied around a sob. “You're a stupid fucking moron.”

“All for one, one for all,” Dave whispered by way of reply. “That's the only rule, Kurt. All for one, one for all.”

Kurt said nothing. Reluctant understanding passed over his face, his fearful eyes looking up at him. He gave a single nod, then surged forward to kiss him.

“If you die, I won't ever forgive you,” he said when they parted, his voice hard and razor-sharp. “You hear me? Never. So you better survive.”

“I'm a survivalist,” Dave answered with a smile. “It's what I do.”

“I love you, god dammit,” Kurt said. “You fucking asshole, I fucking love you.”

The door crunched again. The creatures were audible now, sticking their snouts and paws and talons into the hole they were creating in the wood.

“Hide,” Dave said. “Stay low. If you have to kill them, kill them quietly. Don't leave until you hear me shout that it's okay. You hear me? You stay here until I shout.”

“Got it,” CJ said. He grabbed Kurt's wrist. “Come on.”

Kurt came forward again, kissing Dave fiercely. “I'm waiting,” he said. That was all he said.

Dave smiled, then ran for the back door.

**

The creatures were piled against the door, high enough to touch the awning above it. The fabric stretched, strained with the pressure coming from below, but did not rip. He moved into the middle of the street, where there were no longer any creatures, and let out a long, loud whistle.

It was surreal, the way all those creatures suddenly turned their attention to him, a rapt audience. The Horror swooped down to look at him, hovering over its horde as they came closer.

“Hey you ugly sons-of-bitches, I'm real tasty,” he said, with a grin. “So come and get me.”

Then he ran. He could hear the creatures giving chase, could hear The Horror let out its scream as it soared over the swarm excitedly. Dave ran harder than he had ever run before, his legs burning, his lungs screaming. He worried about the volume of his voice as he shouted: “GO! GO! GO!” In the distance, he saw the doors of the building burst open and two figures bolted out, into the street and away.

Dave breathed a sigh of relief, backing up to face the onslaught of creatures. Just a few yards away he could see a small house – more of a shack, really – and he ran for it. A temporary shelter. The creatures slammed against the walls of the shack, broke the windows, howled and screamed indignantly at the obstacle between them and food.

He did a quick sweep of the house. Whoever had lived here must have been a little on the crazy side, what with the 24 inch machete under the single bed, but he wasn't complaining. He knew he'd gotten lucky.

And lucky him. There was a loft, with a window: perfect roof access.

He climbed up it. _Cut off the head and the rest will die,_ he thought. Or, he hoped. If he could take down The Horror, he could cut off their summoning signal. Without The Horror's cries to guide them, it might be easier to get rid of the swarm. He climbed out the loft window and up onto the gabled roof.

The darkness did not make the size of the horde look smaller. They circled the house, predatory, growling and pounding at the walls. Above him, The Horror flapped its awful wings. For a long moment, they stared each other down. Dave wrapped his hands tight around the handle of the machete, his heart pounding in his ears. This was the moment. This would determine fate itself. If he couldn't win this battle, that was it, that was the end. If he couldn't do this... if he couldn't live through this...

The Horror swooped down. Dave thought of Kurt's face when he came, thought of the way he laughed so gently, the way his eyes sparkled when he was planning something mischievous; thought of the softness of his kiss, the comforting feeling of his hand in Dave's, so beautiful in the comically sized cup of Dave's palm. He thought of all these things, but most of all he thought of Kurt's face when they'd parted.

_If you die, I won't ever forgive you._

_I love you, god dammit. You fucking asshole, I fucking love you._

Dave readied the machete. The Horror flew closer, and Dave swung.

**

It took three days to walk back. He hadn't made it out of the battle unscathed. On the contrary, he'd taken quite a lashing. There had been several moments where he was surrounded and he thought that surely this was the end, that he was going to die then and that it all would've been worth it anyway. But Kurt's words rang in his head: _If you die, I won't ever forgive you. You fucking asshole, I fucking love you._

Those words kept him going. He hadn't been stupid enough to slice through the crowd; no, he'd been sneaky. He'd gone out the window with the lowest density of creatures and worked his way out from there. The fuckers were fast, though, and each of them struck out, hitting him with paws and teeth and claws. He'd felt their teeth grip his arm and hold, felt their claws tear through his flesh, and he knew, _knew_ , he should be dead.

But he couldn't die. Not yet, anyway. He still had so much surviving to do!

In order to make his escape, he left a boombox playing whiny country music in the loft. It kept the bulk of the creatures occupied. The ones he could outrun, when he could run, would return to the source of the noise if they lost sight of him. He'd kept low to the ground as he made his way back to the town, ducked into alleys and in doorways to remain out of sight, and when he cleared the outskirts of town and saw that the truck was gone, he was filled with an airy happiness. They'd made it out.

But it was a long walk back, and he was badly injured. On the first night, he'd surveyed his cuts: a gash from temple to chin, jagged and rough. It would scar over. It would be permanent. Across his back were several long, sharp claw marks, drawn over his skin. They burned fiercely, but he worried more about infection than anything else. Not that he could do anything about infection out here in the dark on his own. Then there were the lacerations on his arms, varying in size and depth; the gouged area of his leg that he'd gotten climbing over that cyclone fence. It now had several brothers and sisters, joined up on his thighs and across his calves. It hurt to walk, it hurt to breathe. The only broken bones he was sure of were some of his ribs, but he suspected he'd broken his machete arm from all the swinging and slicing. Luckily his legs seemed to be okay, though sore. He was at least able to walk. He counted that as a victory. He wasn't sure how much blood he'd lost. Every step made him woozy.

It took him three long days to walk back. Several times during that time he'd collapsed on the side of the road and thought about dying. He was sure that, if he closed his eyes and just gave himself permission, he'd die. Just like that. If he just said it was okay to let go, then he could just end the pain.

_If you die, I won't ever forgive you._

Each time, a mantra in his head that kept him holding on, dangling from that precipice between life and death. He walked balanced on a tightrope, walking to the other side of the gorge, the chasm so deep and endless that he could not see the bottom. Death. So final.

He kept going. He was so thirsty, and so hungry. By the last day, every little movement he made was a grand effort. It took all his strength to make it into the yard and to the door. He opened it, his hand fumbling stupidly at the door knob. It swung open. Someone let out a startled cry and Dave collapsed to the ground, the dusty carpet rubbing his cheek hard, and passed out.

**

_You are such an idiot, you know that? You asshole. I'm so. I'm_ furious _with you, David Karofsky. So you have to wake up so I can shout at you. You have to wake up. You have to wake up so I can tell you how much I hate you._

_Wake up, you selfish son of a bitch. Remember that I won't forgive you if you die. Never. Not as long as I live. You have to wake up. You promised me you wouldn't die._ You promised me.

**

Dave opened his eyes. The world was still dark, the light in the room no stronger than that of a candle, and yet the pain hit him like a sledgehammer. It pounded against his head and all over his body like little men with hammers slamming against his bones. He let out a tired groan and was surprised to hear a gasp in response.

“David!” a voice said. “David, you're awake!”

He grunted in response. His tongue felt thick and dry. He waved a hand, lifting it to his mouth to signal: _water, water, water_.

“Here,” the voice said. Something poked at his mouth. A straw. He carefully wrapped his lips around it and drank. It was cool and sweet, a soothing balm for his throat. He'd never tasted water so delicious. “I'll get you some more, just a second.” The voice was going to leave. He reached a hand out and grabbed at the voice. His hand found a slender wrist. He opened his eyes more fully, looking blearily up at Kurt.

“What?” Kurt asked, returning to his chair next to Dave's bed. “What is it?” He looked awful, with dark circles under his eyes. He looked somewhat gaunt and pale, but there was a light in his eyes, a happiness that even the concern could not hide. His hair stuck up in all directions. It made Dave smile a little. “What do you need, David? I'll go get it.”

“I told you,” he whispered. He'd tried to speak it but his voice didn't seem to want to work. It hissed out of him like steam out of a kettle, forced into a whistle of sound.

“What?” Kurt leaned forward, concerned. “What did you say?”

“I told you,” Dave repeated. Kurt looked at him, confused, and Dave smiled as best he could through the pounding sledgehammers. “I told you I wouldn't die. I promised you.”

Kurt let out a soft chuckle and took Dave's hand in both of his, kissing each knuckle. He brought it up to his face, touched it against his cheek. Dave could feel the tears there. He looked into Dave's eyes, voice shaking.

“A man of his word,” he whispered, voice trembling. “I love that.”

**

“I can't wait until you're better so I can beat the shit out of you.”

“Woah,” Dave said, looking up at Kurt over his sandwich. “Violent much? Geez.”

“You deserve it, you dick,” Kurt continued. “Making me worry like that. Who does that? Seriously.”

“Well, sheesh, sorry for saving your life then,” Dave sniffed. He returned to his sandwich. “See if I ever save you from a horde of monsters ever again.”

Kurt smiled at him, soft and loving. “You really are a total fucking moron, you know that? By far the stupidest person I've ever met.”

Dave thought it over for a moment. “That may be so, but I'd do it over again,” he said finally. “Besides, I'm not dead. Everything went better than expected.”

“You left out the part where you showed up at the door covered in blood – your _own_ blood – and were out for a _week_. You forgot that bit. That's kind of important.”

“No, that's what I meant,” he said nonchalantly. “I didn't die, so everything went better than expected.”

That lulled the conversation into a reflective silence. Neither of them said anything, meditating on the events of the past few weeks. Dave resumed eating his sandwich, waiting for Kurt to say something, knowing that he needed to say something.

“We were worried you weren't going to pull through for a while,” Kurt said softly. He began to stroke his thumb in circles over Dave's wrist absently, staring down at their hands. “Whenever I woke up, if I slept at all, I'd have to put my hand in front of your face to check if you were still breathing.” He paused, contemplating. “I've never been so scared.”

“I know,” Dave replied, turning his hand over to hold Kurt's. “I'm sorry I put you through that.”

Kurt looked up. “You better be, you jerk.”

“I love you too,” Dave replied and resumed eating his sandwich.

**

_That certain night, the night we met, there was magic abroad in the air..._

Kurt held out a hand. “Hey,” he said. “Come dance.”

Dave held up one swaddled arm. “But...?”

“No excuses, get up.”

Dave stood, taking Kurt close to him. “Watch the arm,” he said as he pulled him close.

“Mm,” Kurt hummed in response. He wrapped his own arms around Dave's neck and buried his head in the crook of his neck, swaying to the music.

_I may be right, I may be wrong, but I'm certainly willing to swear, that when you turned and smiled at me, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square..._

The firelight danced around them, stretching their shadows into what felt like infinity. In the golden glow of the fire, Kurt almost radiated a visible aura. Dave felt so lucky to have been pulled into it, to be able to touch this aura. For years, he'd thought if he touched it, he'd burn up alive. Surely, something so bright, so ethereal, could not be touched by those undeserving of it. And yet here he was, bathed in its soft glow, welcomed into it with receiving arms. He felt like he'd won the lottery, the luckiest man on earth, and not just because he'd cheated death.

The road to recovery was far from over, though it had been weeks since Dave had knocked on Death's door and ran like a kid playing a prank. Since then he had come a long way. He was covered in scars and it still hurt to breathe sometimes; his broken arm didn't hurt as much as it used to, though it was still fairly tender. He couldn't run very well anymore, and had a slight limp to his walk, but at least he could still walk a straight line.

Despite all these injuries and imperfections, Dave had never been so happy. This safehouse, so warm and inviting with its dust bunnies under all the furniture, with its old records and picture windows, its tacky wallpaper and its airy bedrooms, had become his home. Though he knew it wasn't the walls or the roof that made this house so wonderful. It was his companions. It had always been them. He would have done it all over again, a thousand times, for eternity, all for them. These two were his new family, the boy he loved and his new best friend and his little dog, too. The four of them, tucked up snug and safe in the house together. It was hard to believe that the world was so dangerous outside when the house was so safe, so warm inside.

CJ sat in an overstuffed arm chair, draped over the arm rests with Brisket in his lap. He was reading a book, some classic he'd found in the house, and Brisket slept peacefully. They were inseparable, CJ and Brisket, two peas in a pod.

And then, of course, there was Kurt. This person, who had come back into Dave's life so suddenly and under such awful circumstances, had changed everything, overhauled Dave's entire way of thinking. He'd rewritten history, in a sense, to remind Dave about empathy and humanity, to remind Dave about love and life and laughter. To remind him of music, of kisses, of soft words spoken in darkness, skin on skin, the movement of two halves becoming a whole. Kurt had protected him as much as Dave had protected Kurt, a shield before him to stave off the terror, the fear, the part of him that Dave had thought had been broken so long ago.

“I love you,” he whispered in Kurt's ear over the record player's warbling. “Thank you. For everything.”

Kurt laughed against Dave's neck, a joyous little sound. He moved his lips up close to Dave's. “I love you too.” He kissed him then, and everything was perfect.

“Holy shit! Guys!” CJ suddenly shouted. The two of them turned to face him. For a brief second, every nerve in Dave's body lit with fear of danger. But CJ didn't look scared. He looked... excited. He looked really, really excited. “It's-- it's raining!”

They moved apart and to the window, the three of them and that little dog, and stared out at the landscape. In the distance was a sliver of light, like the sun through dark clouds, and there it was, those raindrops falling against the parched grass, the grungy windows. It became a downpour, soaking the thirsty earth.

“It's over,” Dave said. He didn't know how he knew. He just did. Knew then and there that it was finally done. Months of fear, of darkness, and then peace, creeping up hopeful and curious over the horizon like a curious but shy child.

“We made it,” Kurt said softly, smiling wide. He slipped his hand into Dave's.

They listened to the rain fall, that _shhhhh_ of water falling rapid and hard, with wonder. They'd forgotten what weather was like, what all weather was like, and now here it was. All they could do was stare, watch as the world began to restore order, as chaos finally began to subside.

Behind them, the record still played, warbling away.

_And like an echo, far away, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square._

** The End **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, wow. I can't believe I actually finished this. I figured I'd give up and go home! I've never been one to finish what I've started, particularly when it comes to writing endeavors; in fact, I actually had a good chunk written for an entirely different fic for this bang, and what you have before you has actually been sitting, neglected, on my computer for over a year. It's weathered hard drive crashes and writer's block. It actually saved itself not too long ago by compelling me to back it up on the internet one day before my hard drive failed on me. I figured if this Little Story That Could could survive the worst of the worst, I had to write it. It was practically begging me to finish.
> 
> This fic would absolutely not have been possible without the help of some pretty fantastic people, whom I'd like to thank right here, right now. First I would really like to thank my betas, Ashley and Maddy, who gracefully stepped up to the plate in the 9th inning to read over this. Without them, my fic would be rough and I wouldn't feel confident about it. Thanks bros, you're the best. I also want to extend my love to my LJ friends list who put up with all my brainstorming, complaints, desperate begging and occasional random update interspersed with my "I can't do this why am I trying" entries. You guys have always been tremendously supportive of me and I'm thankful for that. Thanks for listening to me bitch, piss and moan. I would also like to thank the mods of the bang for organizing this and making it smooth and wrinkle-free. This is my first BB experience and I am really glad I chose this one, it's small and everyone has been so friendly. Thanks for all your help and guidance and your hard work in organizing the event. I know I definitely wouldn't be able to do this, I'm too damn disorganized!!
> 
> Like I mentioned, this fic has been in the works for well over a year. I started it sometime last spring, early on, before season 2 had ended; that's why the timeline is so weird. I continued on the head-canon timeline I had invented, which actually made writing this very difficult as I couldn't remember where in the actual timeline I had started... hopefully, the jump in time between when I started and when I continued isn't obvious. Initially I had planned to write a more comedic approach to this, but I've never been good at writing humorous things despite the fact my favorite movie genres are horror and bro comedy. I always have to make things dramatic. It's the romantic in me, I suppose. Or the tortured angsty poet. Or something. The boys kind of took me for a ride.
> 
> And lastly, I want to thank YOU, dear reader, for sticking with this. If you finished the fic, here's hoping you liked it. If you didn't finish it, thanks for giving it a try anyway. Basically, thank YOU! Without the pressure of knowing that other people were going to be looking at this, I would never have put in so much time and effort to make sure the fic was at the very least acceptable and on par with the expectations of my readers.
> 
> Read full acknowledgments at my journal: http://angelking.livejournal.com/5925.html


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